City of Ember by Jean DuPrau

I picked this book up from the charity shop never having heard of the author and not knowing that it was a children’s book until I started reading it.  But put post-apocalyptic and fiction in the same sentence and I am on it like a bookworm getting her fix.

The book is set in a town called Ember, nothing exists outside of the town except for darkness and the town contains everything the dwellers will ever need.  All light is provided by electric lights during the day and at night there is pitch black.   Except the lights are starting to stutter and the food and supplies the town needs are starting to dwindle leading people to start asking whether anything lies beyond the dark.

The prologue to the book tells us that the “Builders” of Ember expected the people to live in the city for two hundred years and then gain access to instructions which would lead them out of the city, over time the instructions are misplaced and accurate time keeping of the two hundred years is lost, so that the period may have been exceeded by an unknown amount of time.

Lina and Doon are two children who have just finished their schooling and are expected to take their place amongst the adults of Embers and learn the trade assigned to them to help keep Ember running, Lina as a messenger and Doon working underground in the pipework’s below the city that keep it functioning.  When they come across a damaged old parchment they are convinced that within its directions lies the salvation of Ember.  How will they decipher it with so much of it missing and will they be able to do so before the town falls into permanent darkness?

This is a fast-paced, clever book, with the action moving at a cracking pace. The characters are easy to like, with many eliciting a lot of sympathy and sadness from the reader: Lina’s senile grandmother, her toddler sister left without parents at such a tiny age, the various lonely and frightened people of Ember trying to survive on less and less.  The world of Ember is fascinating and brought to life through its songs, way of life and the anxiety of the people as we witness the slow decline of the towns infrastructure.

The book was a little predictable and I knew what was coming towards the end, but I raced through it to see how the characters could possibly find resolution.  As with all of the best post-apocalyptic fiction, the ending leaves us with as many questions as answers and ends one journey with the start of another.  I would happily read the next book in this series to find out what happens next.

The Girl with All the Gifts by Mike Carey

I came across some rave reviews for this book online, so decided to treat myself to it. I am a big fan of any kind of post-apocalyptic literature. I love the creation of a possible future world, whether positive or negative and the various scenarios played out in the new world and how humanity deals with them.

Zombie books I am less keen on. There seems to be a lot of the samey shuffling around, groaning and eating people and I don’t have much of a stomach for gore. Occasionally there is something different, like World War Z (detailed and intelligent) or Warm Bodies (funny and not too bogged down by endless boring zombie chases). I would put The Girl with All the Gifts into that something different category.

The Girl with All the Gifts is set in a future world which has been overrun and destroyed by a virus that causes people to turn into zombies (or “hungries”). Melanie is a very intelligent little girl that lives on an army base somewhere in England. Every day she is taken from a locked room, strapped to a wheelchair with a gun pointed at her head and taken to a classroom to join other children strapped in wheelchairs. They are taught about the world by various teachers including her favourite Miss Justineau. It is difficult to give an idea of what the book is about without giving too much away and spoiling the suspense. Certainly when I ordered the book, I knew every little and on reading it I enjoyed the story unfolding layer by layer.

It takes the book some time to reveal why the children are kept in this way and what the purpose of the base is. Throughout this part of the book we get to know Melanie – her genius level intelligence, coupled with ignorance about the world outside the base and her innocent questioning of what is going on around her.

Whereas the first part of the book cranks up the tension with its slow reveal and fascinating premise, the second part of the book changes gear. It is faster in pace, but I was somewhat less engrossed as the trajectory of the next part of the story felt a little bit more like familiar ground. Towards the last third, the book slows down and the intrigue and revelations start rolling again. I found myself hooked at the end again and reading the last part of the book when I was supposed to be getting ready for work so that I could find some resolution for the characters and the situation they find themselves in.

This book is elevated from the usual groaning and gore of this genre by its beautiful writing – we get to see the world from the perspective of someone who has only read about trees, butterflies and birds and then gets to see them for the first time with completely fresh eyes. The novel also does something else which zombie books don’t tend to do, which is to explore the human condition and relationships: guilt, despair, hope and the love between Melanie and her beloved Miss Justineau.

The book makes an intelligent and believable attempt at including the science around the Zombies and what has happened to Melanie and the other children like her without getting bogged down by it too much. I liked also that the book is set in England including locations in London which are certainly given a complete, rather terrifying, makeover for the future. The glimpses into the near past and how the government reacted to the virus are haunting and the hints about what might have happened to them are haunting and one of the things that stayed with me at the end of the book.

This was probably one of the best books I have read this year. I think the writer takes a genre that can be treated quite superficially with a focus on gore and gives it heart and depth through the journey that Melanie is taken on. Rather than a simple blood-fest it becomes a thoughtful commentary on love, humanity and evil, still with lots of gross bits of course.

Book Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I am a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction and this book seemed to appear in a number of top ten/best of type lists, so I really wanted to take a look.  The Road is the story of a father and son who are travelling through America ten years after a major disaster has hit the country and presumably the world.  The world has become a very bleak place where nothing grows, everything is covered in ash and the sun is virtually blocked out by a dark sky.  The few remaining survivors are forced to scavenge for whatever they can find and even to resort to cannibalism.  The roads are travelled by dangerous and violent men, driven on by desperation:

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” ― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

In such an environment we find a man and his son travelling on their way to the south of the country in the hope that they will find a warmer climate that will allow them to survive the winter.

On picking up the book, I was slightly reluctant as there didn’t seem to be much happening apart from two people travelling along a road.  I was encouraged by the fact that it was a fairly small book and should not take too long to read.  I was right about that.  I read this book in one or two sittings.  I just did not want to put it down.

That is not to say that this is an easy or pleasant read.  Once I started reading and got caught up in the struggle of the two main characters, I found myself tense and anxious.  Every time I had to put the book down, I could not wait to rush back and pick it up to make sure that the two characters were going to be okay.

This book has some brutal scenes which are painful to read and which haunted me long after I finished this book.  My mind continues to return again and again to scenarios in the book and fret about how things could have been different and how people could end up in the way they do in this book.

At the same time, what stands out is the very sweet relationship between the father and son.  How then man (the characters are never named) does everything he can to protect his son, to reassure him that they will be okay.  The tenderness between the two characters is very moving and portrayed beautifully.  The boy has a very sweet nature and remains loving and caring despite witnessing so much brutality. 

“You have my whole heart. You always did.”  - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

These qualities mean that we are caught up even more in the pairs struggle and juxtaposed with the violence in the book, this means that I ended up reading this book mostly in a state of unease.  At times I found myself so drawn into the book that I would be in a state of semi-panic.

Throughout the book, there are references to the hopelessness of the survivors, particularly in the way that they have rejected God or their own humanity.  Yet the tenderness of the father and son, their patience and their willingness to keep going suggests there is cause to believe otherwise:

 “Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.” -  Cormac McCarthy, The Road

This is a very hard book to read, I felt so very sad at the end of it and the images will remain with me a long time.  Despite this it is a beautifully written and extraordinarily engaging book.

image source