Set in present day, it follows Jon Keller, an American Historian, and his fellow guests at a hotel in Switzerland, following a nuclear war. Pretty much every major city in the world has been bombed. The majority of guests have left, trying to get back to their homes even thought the media has advised them against doing so (no aeroplanes, no public transport). Jon and a small group of other guests decide to stay and make the best of it.
Whilst checking water supplies in the roof storage tanks, they find the body of a child, and Jon decides to investigate.
The book is written in Jon's voice as he writes a diary, a history, of his and the other guests survival, and his investigation.
I really liked this. It wasn't sensationalised, it all seemed so reasonable, and in our current worldwide political climate, so plausible - which is what made it really scary. It did have a bit of the "Huis Clos" (a play by Jean Paul Sartre) feeling about it: a feeling of being trapped with the same day coming around again and again, no escape, stuck with the same people that you neither particularly like or trust. And I liked that about it.
By the way, in the advent of a nuclear holocaust, Switzerland would seem to be a pretty civilised place to be 'stuck'.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Viking for the copy of this book to read and review!
The Woman with Nine Lives
Book
Iby Knill is a simply remarkable woman. An Auschwitz holocaust survivor originally from Bratislava,...
Measure of a Man: From Auschwitz Survivor to Presidents' Tailor
Martin Greenfield and Wynton Hall
Book
He's been called "America's greatest living tailor" and "the most interesting man in the world."...
Women and Images of Men in Cinema: Gender Construction in la Belle et la Bete by Jean Cocteau
Book
Women and men in cinema are imaginary constructs created by filmmakers and their audiences. The...
Rechnitz, and the Merchant's Contracts
Elfriede Jelinek and Gitta Honneger
Book
For much of her career, Elfriede Jelinek has been maligned in the press for both her unrelenting...
A Sparrow in Terezin
10.0
Rate It
Book
Bound together across time, two women will discover a powerful connection through one survivor's...
The Imposter
Book
The Impostor, by the admired Spanish writer Javier Cercas, is a true story that is nevertheless...
Constantine the Emperor
Book
No Roman emperor had a greater impact on the modern world than did Constantine. The reason is not...
The New Rebellion (Star Wars Legends)
8.0
Rate It
Book
Somewhere in the galaxy, millions suddenly perish in a blinding instant of pain, anguish, and...
ClareR (5996 KP) rated Send For Me in Books
Sep 7, 2021
This was a different take on other books set at this time, and I liked that about it very much. I haven’t read many books about those who managed to escape the Nazi regime and immigrate to safe countries before the Holocaust really began. But it’s no less saddening for that. Annalise desperately misses her parents, and life is so utterly different in the US.
The story swaps between Annalise and her granddaughter, Clare, whose life couldn’t have been any more different. Clare has the much more liberated life of an American woman - whether that’s what she really wants, remains to be seen.
I really enjoyed seeing the juxtaposition between a 1930s immigrant and a modern young woman. Annalise’s fear of being in a big city with no English is palpable - I panicked along with her. It must be so scary to move somewhere that’s completely different to your own life experience, and not even have a common language - something that people have always had to endure for their own safety throughout the ages.
This is a really moving novel, made more so when I learnt that the letters between Annalise and her mother Klara were real - just that the names were changed.