Who’s in the mood for a dystopian novel? Me! Or, I was, anyway – till I read this book and realised it wasn’t so much dystopian as current affairs. It was written in 1987 (I think – may need to fact check) so you could surmise that the events and locations presented in the narrative were but a horrible nightmare dreamt up by the author, trying to imagine the worst possible things he could think of for ordinary people to cope with.
Anna Blume is searching for her brother William, who moved to the ‘city’ and vanished – no one has heard from him for a long time. She fears the same will happen to her, as the city is a crumbling, bleak place, where corpses line the streets and people scavenge for food. Once you’re there, it’s impossible to leave (though Anna doesn’t try very hard IMO) and you risk starving or being chopped up and eaten by some downright wrong’uns.
OK, so that’s not exactly like anywhere I’m actually aware of, but it doesn’t feel like it’s so far in the future anyway. The societal structure is familiar, the behaviours of the people are familiar, and the absolute tyranny of the government/lawmakers is something you can watch with your own eyes on the evening news. Then the story loses some of its shock value – there was me, wanting to lift myself out of reality with a nice dark fiction, and oh – nope, it’s just another version of life.
Generally, though, the book is OK – not too writerly – a bit earnest in places, I feel like Paul Auster might be one of those ‘serious’ authors – and there’s some gratuitous lesbian/masturbation scenes that feel very much like a male author wanting to touch himself – but generally, it was OK.
In short…
Not quite what I was after, tbh, and though I’ve said it was OK, I was actually bored sometimes. Quite forgettable, 4/10
Books Fran Has Read 