Product Description

The objective of advertising is to change the behaviour of the consumer so they purchase more of the product. That, at any rate, is the theory. But Jimmy Lyle may have taken things a bit too far with his controversial strategy for the UK launch of Kwench! When the new orange soft-drink hits the streets, it triggers a series of events he could not have anticipated. Certainly he never dreamed it would plunge him into the twilight world of synchronised swimming. Nor did he think it would end in murder

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #195521 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
At first glance, the thrillers of Rupert Thomson seem to have nothing in common except the expansiveness of his imagination and the lucid radiance of his writing. Air & Fire is about a group of French people sent to California at the end of the 19th century to build a church. The Insult is about a man blinded by a robber in a supermarket parking lot who discovers one night that--because of a bizarre experiment--he can see again. Thomson's latest finds three very different characters--an aimless waitress, a reluctant hit man, and an ambitious young marketing executive--linked by the sudden success of a new soft drink. But a closer look confirms the feeling that Soft continues the author's fascination with the way science can bend and shape the destinies of all sorts of nonscientific people. Certainly Glade Spencer, the flaky young woman who flies off periodically for unpleasant encounters with her American lawyer boyfriend, has no idea when she signs up for a sleep clinic to earn some extra cash that the soda slogans planted in her brain could cause her death. Barker Dodds, the nightclub bouncer from Plymouth, doesn't know why he's being paid to kill Glade. And James Lyle, the striving marketer who thought up the brainwashing scheme in the first place, is deliberately out of the loop about its consequences. All three are so perfectly drawn that you'd recognize them on the street, and the way Thomson describes their quirky, weirdly decorated flats and lifestyles captures the flickering pulse of London with uncanny accuracy. --Dick Adler

Review
'This exuberant, demonic novel, beautifully constructed in its writing, is as tightly constructed as a cat's cradle an undoubted triumph It sticks, appropriately, in the mind like a hook' Mail on Sunday 'Brilliant Thomson's achievement is to have put a thrillingly contemporary twist on the institutionalised corruption theme of so much popular fiction' Independent 'Thomson has the storyteller's knack of keeping you glued to the page Impressive and compulsive' Telegraph 'Tough, funny and scary Hypnotic and charming Painterly, he sets words against one another so their meanings seem to pool and bleed, making something new' Independent on Sunday

A novel that gives lie to the current rosy view of Britain that the politicians would have you believe. The characters here are desperate hard-edged losers and disaffected mavericks. The story revolves around a hired thug, a bored girl and a cynical marketing executive whose lives are fatally enmeshed by the controversial launch of a gimmicky soft drink. Thomson's prose matches his cold-eyed vision of a troubled society. (Kirkus UK)

A subliminal ad gimmick for a soil drink goes awry in London, and an aging bully boy is enlisted to destroy the evidence - a young waitress - in Thomson's latest dispatch from the hope-abandoned shadow zone he travels so widely and so well (The Insult, 1996, etc.). Barker wants to leave his troubles behind when he moves from his dreary digs in northwest England to London, but taking work as a barber doesn't pay his bills, so when an unsavory offer comes along (as he knew in his heart it would), he can't really refuse. The woman he's asked to murder, Glade Spencer, is a pretty art-school graduate whose insomnia led her to a "sleep clinic" that was actually a front for a top-secret, decidedly sinister marketing venture. The corporate handlers of Soft!, an orange-colored and -flavored beverage about to be launched in England, used the clinic to turn people subliminally into "ambassadors," little more than walking ads for their product. But the effect of the ploy on Glade was severe: she came unhinged, arousing the suspicions of a friend, who then alerted the press. Before the story can break, however, the marketers employ a little old-fashioned damage control: namely, Barker. What they don't know is that he's sick to death of the mess he's made of his life, and determined not to make it worse. He follows Glade for weeks, watching her and uncertain how to proceed, but when the screws are turned on him he acts. Even at its bleakest, this suggests, more than incarnates, the banality of evil. But a full, unnerving control probes the fraying mental states of the story's doomed and damned from beginning to end - a focus that makes for positively riveting results. (Kirkus Reviews)

Financial Times
‘Soft is adroit about its London-ness, its language rich and barbed...the prose style – hallucinatory, sensual and gripping is a dream’

Customer Reviews

Thumbs Down - description for description's sake.
Disappointed! Having read 'Air and Fire' back in the 90's and absolutely loving it, I finally got round to reading another RT book - and I shouldn't have chosen this one. The story line is weak, and the writing is totally OTT in terms of his need to over-describe everything in a really amateur way - and don't get me wrong, it was his descriptive writing which made me fall in love with Air and Fire. In this novel, it totally overpowers the story, which in its own right is poor. In addition, the link with viral marketing is completely flawed. Sorry Rupert - thumbs down from me!

Promising start but felt let down
I really liked the opening part of the book which focussed on Barker, but then I felt the following parts fell flat, especially the ending which was woeful. Also found the similies started to grate after a while.

Effervescent Writing
"Soft" is a novel based around three central characters; the reluctant hard man Barker Dodds, bewildered Kwench ! guinea pig Glade Spencer and ruthless advertising executive , Jimmy Lyle. They are all involved in some way with a sinister , subliminal mind-control project linked with the UK launch of the soft drink Kwench ! Predictably things don't go to plan and tragic consequences ensue.

The characters of Barker and Glade are explored in detail and despite their different social backgrounds and the random manner in which they are thrown together , their similarities outweigh their differences. Both are essentially loners,disconnected from the world around them, seeking stability and meaning in life after emerging from broken domestic relationships . The working class ,bouncer-turned-barber anti-hero Barker meets the petit-bourgeois art-school waitress Glade.

What I enjoyed most about "Soft" (and other Rupert Thomson novels) is the stylish and evocative writing. You could open the book at random and be impressed by the smart observations, the sharp, minimalist imagery and the smoothness of the narration. Here are some examples :

"Her eyes were pale grey-blue , the kind of colour that on paint-sample charts would probably be called "Cool Slate" or "Dawn Surprise".

"She walked on ,through streets that smelled of exhaust-fumes, blossom and ... toast."

"The sky was the colour of beer."

Such is the vividness of Thomson's writing that at times you can almost smell it.

So why not give "Soft" 5 stars ? Well, probably because the plot was a little inconsequential at times with themes like mind-control underdeveloped as the author focused on exploring at length the characters of the main protagonists, their unfulfilled lives and their relationship with modern society.

Barker and Glade both have big hearts and ultimately this proves incompatible with the amoral urban environment in which they must live.