The Current
Yannick Thoraval, 2014
Furber
252 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780992591601
Summary
The island is sinking. No doubt.
When the president of a sinking tropical island calls on the world’s most ingenious entrepreneurs to help save his people, Peter Van Dooren answers the call.
Van Dooren’s wealth and prestige mean that his family wants for nothing – except a husband and a father.
As an engineer, Van Dooren believes his idea can not only save the island and its people’s way of life. It could also transform ideas about culture and nations. After all, changing the world is what Peter Van Dooren really wants. But playing God may cost Van Dooren his fortune and his own family.
While Van Dooren plots a world away, his wife, son and daughter sink deeper into their own personal abyss of retail therapy, amateur pornography and religious extremism. Everyone is adrift on the same tide of greed, lust and fear. This is the current that shapes the world. It always has; it always will. Is anyone strong enough to resist it?
Commended by judges of the prestigious Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, The Current is the story of a man's obsession with overcoming the forces of nature. At all costs. It is a story about culture and nations and how to find one’s place in the world.
Ironic and slyly, bleakly humorous, The Current shows us how our modern affluence buys us material comfort at the expense of a sense of purpose in our lives. It is a hopeful story about finding meaning in our relationships and strength through our community. It asks us to rekindle our relationship with nature. The novel is reminiscent of the film Network, re-imagined for the 21st century.
The style of writing is literary (thoughtful but humorous), and will appeal to readers of Jonathan Franzen (particularly Freedom) and Michel Houellebecq (particularly Platform). Stylistically, The Current offers readers a back and forth split storyline and portent of danger comparable to Paul Thomas Anderson's film, Magnolia (1999).