This
book haunts me. It is brilliantly written – as one would expect from a Nobel
Laureate - but the genius of this story for me – like that
which characterises Never Let Me Go
or The Remains of the Day - is that it seemed to ‘enter the pores’ as I
read it, and become part of my thoughtworld, as I went about my daily life.
Months later, I still think of Klara, the eponymous character I wanted to
rescue from her indifferent, dystopian setting. Though she isn’t human, Klara
is more humane than the people she loves and who do not love her.
The final
sequences of this book will remain with me always. I hated to put it down and
have seldom been more invested in fiction.
*The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller* *Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021* *A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick*
'A delicate, haunting story' The Washington Post 'This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go . . . tender, touching and true.' The Times
'The Sun always has ways to reach us.'
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges…
I
love expertly-written, plausible-sounding, original sci-fi or other-worldly books, and Annihilation ticked all my boxes!
The story is related from the point of view of the
Biologist, a variously-reliable narrator, as she enters a preternatural "anomaly" in an American coastal area. This story caused me to cling to the
narrator as things got progressively weirder -
even though I knew my guide was mutating into something terrifying as
she spoke and acted!
It's a brilliant, engrossing narrative I can't forget - and one in a trilogy, so I'm heading in there
again and again.
THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY - NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC
For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border - an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.
The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.
So
brilliant and weird! This one won the 2022 Booker, so it’s no surprise that the
prose is outstanding.
When the Booker gets experimental, though, that doesn’t
always mean the narrative is ‘this side’ of coherent - and I do like a story. Seven Moons sails close to the wind, I think, but what a trip! Phenomenally
original - rightly reviewed as
“kaleidoscopic’, it transported me, with the murdered narrator, to an
unexpected afterlife where all that makes us human – and animal – is rendered
in chaotic fluorescence. But there is always a plan.
Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida-war photographer, gambler, and closet queen-has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to…
Jack Flynn, strong and aggressive, but slowly dying of tuberculosis on his farm in Tipperary in the Republic of Ireland, decides to acquire - buy - a young wife who can bear him sons to inherit his family's land.
His choice, Caitlin Spillane, is less than half his age, attractive and intelligent, and resents bitterly the obedience that is forced upon her. When Donal Kelly, a young firebrand and IRA activist, arrives in the village, he is determined to liberate Caitlin from her unloved husband - by any means.
A novel set against the struggle for the heart of Ireland in the Second World War.
