bazhsw
7/27/2017
I didn't feel very wowed by this book at all really and I'm not reading what others seem to really like about this.
I kind of think I was supposed to discover something frightening or wonderful about humanity, like there was a core message about what it is to be human and to survive but I really didn't feel it. My overwhelming emotion at the end of the book was, 'is this it?' and 'okay, well that's finished, what am I reading next?'. That's not to say this is a bad book but dare I say it, I felt I didn't feel very wowed by this book at all really and I'm not reading what others seem to really like about this.
I kind of think I was supposed to discover something frightening or wonderful about humanity, like there was a core message about what it is to be human and to survive but I really didn't feel it. My overwhelming emotion at the end of the book was, 'is this it?' and 'okay, well that's finished, what am I reading next?'. That's not to say this is a bad book but dare I say it, I felt it was a little boring. It seemed to take FOREVER to get going (and I can understand it, this is a novel of isolation. When there are only two central characters and they don't talk very often, well, there is not a lot to go on).
I did engage with the story in the last third when the story seemed to develop into something other than 'hang around post-apocalyptic wasteland shooting intruders' but it felt like a real slog to get there.
The writing is all from the perspective of the protagonist, so it often reads like a stream of consciousness, there are no speech quotes and sometimes sentences flow into another. I wouldn't say it is difficult to read but at the same time I didn't see it as a wonderful stylistic choice either. Perhaps this novel thinks it is cleverer than it thinks it is, or perhaps maybe I didn't get it.
In a near future, yet another flu has wiped everyone out bar a few hardy survivors. Our protagonist Hig and his gun nut companion Bentley are holed up in a small airport where they have access to both fuel and a plane. They spend most of their time scouting a perimeter, killing folk who come close and just surviving.
Some part of me thinks this book is just a survivalist gun nut fantasy. The boys are always shootin' and huntin'. It paints a bleak picture of humanity where the only survivors tend to be murderous scumbags who rape and steal from each other. The idea of mutual co-operation will apparently go when the apocalypse comes and only the 'strong' will survive. The novel unfolds and other characters and story elements are introduced and we learn that under the exterior of 'survive' there are still things which make us human. Compassion, love and friendship isn't totally dead.
I think Heller was trying to explore some big ideas here of loneliness and loss, of whether just 'surviving' is enough and I think it takes what should be despicable acts and creates a world where those acts are at least morally ambiguous. It's a novel of fear and a lack of trust and warmth.
I didn't really want to like the characters in the book but I guess I did. I was rooting for them as the story developed into something more than flying a plane over desert. But I guess for me I think the novel holds a lot of promise and some clear themes to make one thing but ultimately it just doesn't hang together for me.
Okay but rather forgettable.