Tag Archives: Dystopia

Breakdown by Katherine Amt Hanna

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

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I simply cannot resist an apocalypse story. Especially one grounded in real life, rather than fantasy / horror tropes. So Breakdown was a must!

It’s very different from the usual premise. A virus wipes out a critical portion of the world’s population, meaning that the survivors have to painstakingly reconstruct society (oh, how I loved the 70s TV series, Survivors!). But Hanna’s tale takes a slightly offbeat perspective.

Former rock star Chris is in America with his wife and child when the plague starts, and it takes him years to get back to England to see if his family have survived. Terrified that he will discover that they perished, he postpones the last lap of his journey, instead falling in with a family in Portsmouth, helping to run their smallholding. Chris is traumatised by his experiences, but through his new found friend Pauline, who was a therapist before the plague hit, he starts to process his memories and feelings and begin to feel like a human being again. But is their relationship just one of therapist and patient? And when it comes to the crunch, who will Chris choose?

Breakdown is a love story, albeit one in an extreme situation. What I enjoyed was that Hanna told the tale from Chris’s point of view in retrospect; we learn of the terrible things that he has endured, but we don’t experience them directly, so the horror of the situation remains containable. The breakdown of society is mirrored by Chris’s personal breakdown, and the novel charts the reconstruction of both community and self. For readers who enjoy psychology, this is fascinating, although it may disappoint those who want a brutal, survivalist narrative. Ultimately this story is about normal people, and the healing power of relationships, rather than dystopian gloom; I found that I cared about Chris and Pauline, and the final section where their happiness is thrown into doubt was very tense for me. It made me think about what really matters in life, and how the choices we make at every stage of our own journey impact on others. Breakdown is a thoughtful, poignant novel, and an intriguing one to add to my collection of apocalypse narratives.

Rating: ***

47North, 2012, ISBN 9781612184111

Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner

21 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Young Adult Fiction Review

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Reproduced with kind permission of Hot Key Books

Reproduced with kind permission of Hot Key Books

For some reason I thought this would be an amusing read to cheer me up after the dark intensity of Then by Julie Myerson – whoops, I got that wrong! But I don’t regret it. It’s a novel that takes familiar concepts and succeeds in creating something very fresh and involving, with a brave and unforgettable climax.

Standish Treadwell likes to keep his head down, especially since his best friend Hector kicked the football over the wall, and he and his parents then disappeared. Standish’s parents have already gone, and he lives with his canny silver fox of a Grandad. It’s 1957 and living in the Zone is no joke – standing out could get Standish into deep, deadly trouble. Especially since Grandad is hiding a Moon Man in the cellar…

Standish’s narration is very convincing and he’s an average teenage boy with a spark about him. It takes a while for the penny to drop, as he takes his world for granted, but this is a story where the Nazis won the Second World War and Standish is living in a totalitarian state. Part of the ongoing efforts of the ruling elite is to win the space race against America – the land of “Crocas-Colas” and cadillacs – and it’s the Resistance’s efforts to disrupt this that blows Standish’s world to smithereens. This is a shocking story in parts, but it’s not without charm, as our hero tries to interpret events in his own way. The ending is superb – and I have to admit, that sitting in the staffroom at work, it made me cry. You can’t say more than that.

Awesome. Rating:****

Hot Key Books, 2013, ISBN 9781471400445

A Song of Stone by Iain Banks

27 Sunday Jan 2013

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Reproduced with kind permission of Little, Brown Book Group

Reproduced with kind permission of Little, Brown Book Group

It’s been a long while since I was gripped by The Wasp Factory, and thought it was time I returned to Iain Banks. A Song of Stone caught my attention as a post-apocalyptic tale – I’ve long been fascinated by such stories, having been hooked by the 70’s TV series Survivors and the 80’s adaption of Day of the Triffids as an impressionable child.

The story is told by a man fleeing his castle in the midst of a un-named war. Abel and his wife Morgan are captured by a band of soldiers led by the fierce and ruthless Lieutenant, who insists that her troops take over the castle. What follows is a battle for power as the Abel tries to subvert the Lieutenant’s authority, and she tries to topple everything he’s ever believed in. The results are shocking, gruesome, and inevitable. Abel’s very educated, privileged background makes him a not entirely sympathetic character; although his world has been invaded, as he tells his story it becomes clear that the rot and decay in the castle is not simply the result of the war, but of the system that caused it – and the rot in heart of him is inextricably linked to the stones within which he’s sought to protect himself.

This is a thought-provoking novel and the ambiguity surrounding the war gives it resonance, as it could be equally set in the distant past or the far future. While the violence is graphic, it is finely judged to create a sense of collapse in society and morality, and as such does not seem gratuitous. Like The Wasp Factory, this is a challenging book, and while disturbing in its concept, in execution it is both gripping and haunting.  Rating: ****

Abacus, 1998, ISBN 9780349110110