"A work of such terrible beauty that you will struggle to look away. It will knock the breath from your lungs" - Tom Gatti, The Times
A father and his young son walk alone through destroyed America, moving slowly towards the coast. There is nothing on their way - except for ash on the wind and some rotten corpses pervaded throughout the post-apocalyptic landscape. They have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food, and each other.
"Did you have any friends?
Yes. I did.
Lots of them?
Yes.
Do you remember them?
Yes. I remember them.
What happened to them?
They died.
All of them?
Yes. All of them.
Do you miss them?
Yes. I do.
Where are we going?
We're going south.
Okay."
This is a horrifying, tender and sad book that might rip your heart apart. The story passes on in a slow rhythm, yet successfully describes the terror of loneliness, despair as well as the little hope in the father and the son. It reflects on the worst and the best thing that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity as well as the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the total devastation. As soon as you open the book, you will be absorbed into a terrifying and cold nightmare which you will find hard to handle without the delicate warmth emitted by the love from the father to his son.
10/10.
Khuong,
ReplyDeleteThis is an incredibly difficult novel - especially for a Year 9 student! I'm impressed...
Mr Ballantine, you have read it as well? Yeah, it is such a sad novel. I cried when the father and the son find the shelter with all the food supplies, especially after the previous shelter that they found had only PEOPLE in it that were being kept for the cannibals to eat. Also, my heart broke at the part where the boy gets to taste the soda.
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