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Attacking his soul, filling it with despair
Forced hate pretending not to care’
Skive is story of a man who was working in a mall for ten years. He was trying his very best not to get promoted to the higher post that had more responsibility with negligible increase in pay. Living in a single not so sweet room with a big, precious cardboard box as his only furniture the protagonist was spending his nights alone in London. The only person making his evenings liveable was Christine. Sweet and young Christine living in the adjacent room, singing the same song over and over again for hours.
His life was going like it was until his boss called him and congratulated him that he was being promoted. He had only two options; 1. To take the post he had worked so hard in avoiding. 2. To simply refuse to take this promotion and to convince his boss in a nice and educated way like adults do. So he did what he was supposed to do; he performed a happy jig by hopping between his left and right leg like a Cockney, screamed at his boss and quit. He marched out of the office with pride and honor that he hasn’t felt before and made his way towards his home in skin biting cold. After breaking door of his apartment's building, ruining some lady’s painting and having been declared a rapist he finds himself out on the streets of London with no money and no place to sleep.
Have you noticed something? Have you noticed that I haven’t mentioned for once the name of the protagonist? Well that’s what the author did, he kept us figuring his name during the whole story. Everyone he meets calls him by a different name and he keeps telling us that it is not his real name and as the story grows you think to yourself that what is this man’s name.
Making fake vodka from flushed toilet water, finding clothes among trash, entering a costume party without invitation, selling stolen tapestries, fighting security and creating a scene at the railway station Skive by Paul Adam Levi is a good fiction with dark humor that makes you laugh and also compels you to ponder over the bitter realities of life that surrounds us. I am giving this book 3 out of 4 stars.
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