Released: 28/09/2018
ISBN: 9781788032834
eISBN: 9781789012033
Format: Paperback/eBook
"I had nothing to hide. I longed for people to watch me. I had important things to say. People would see I was a good guy. I didn’t know how much I would miss owning pieces of time."
Sebastian Stanhope is playing chess at school while millions watch his father cut his mothers throat. Why would Cecil Stanhope, who aspires to be Prime Minister and is a loving husband and father, kill his wife? In a near-future society without privacy, where everyone can watch everything through the omnipresent “W”, Sebastian seeks resolution for his father’s crime.
a rational man is the fascinating story of a young adult trying to find his identity in a world ruled by public opinion and in which each action or inaction provokes comment. As social media, governments and corporations delve deeper into our personal lives, a rational man demonstrates how it is not the state or big business that we have to fear, but each other.
I am a friend of the author and part time book snob.
Before I picked this up, I was worried. I didn't want to have to tell my friend his book was crap. Within a few pages, I knew I had nothing to fear.
The near future he creates is equal parts unsettling and familiar. He deals with dark themes lightly. Throughout the story I flipped back and forth between daunted, desperate and amused. Most of all I sympathised with Sebastian. He is an authentic, compromised and confused young man failing to find peace of mind in a chaos of infinite information.
This is a frank and entertaining speculation on the serious and absurd consequences of the technologies we have adopted so hungrily in the last decade. I hope the next decade doesn't see us closer to the world of a rational man.
I'm relieved to be able to recommend it.
by Marc
J S Hollis
JS Hollis lives in Highbury, London, with his wife and child. He has previously advised on EU and international law in the City. He currently works for the UK Government. This is his first novel.
He had the idea for a rational man. over a decade ago. He was making a short film based on the Velvet Underground song "The Gift" and began to wonder what would happen if everything was recordable and available for everyone to watch. As social media became a part of our daily lives and data became a precious asset, he felt a pressing need to think through the idea. In 2014 he left his job in the City, moved to Kenya and wrote the first draft of a rational man.
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