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Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece...
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The Silk Road was the current name for a complex of ancient trade routes linking East Asia with...
Will Africa Feed China?
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Is China building a new empire in rural Africa? Over the past decade, China's meteoric rise on the...
An Excess Male: A Novel
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From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics,...
Origin
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The spellbinding new Robert Langdon novel from the author of The Da Vinci Code. 'Dan Brown is the...
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The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen
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'This is so much more than a compilation of recipes, gorgeous though they themselves are. This is a...
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The urge to tidiness seems to be rooted deep in the human psyche. Many of us feel threatened by...
Sean Astin recommended Patton (1970) in Movies (curated)
Our narrator, Jon, is a historian witnessing the most monumental event of humanity but at a great distance. He feels compelled to keep a record of the people isolated with him in a vast hotel. He collects their stories and feelings in the faint hope that some sort of civilisation will survive long enough to rediscover them. Through his journal we experience what it would be like to be aware that the world was ending, billions dying, but be totally disconnected from the horrific events.
Most books set during an apocalypse are fraught with traumatic dashes, violent brushes with death, horror and misery. There are elements of that here but this book mostly poses the question of what you would do if there was little drama but lots of time to dwell on things. The people in the hotel are comparatively safe in an old hotel surrounded by forest. They wait for something to happen, for someone to rescue them, or perhaps just for their food to run out. Jon embarks on a quest to solve one cruel murder, taking him down a path of mistrust and near hysteria.
I enjoyed the blend of dystopia and murder mystery; the first half of the book reads like a modern day progeny of George Orwell and Agatha Christie. Asking your audience to imagine bombs wiping out entire countries but then drastically limiting their focus to one death amongst multitudes is startling. I also liked the references to real people and places, there were definite shades of the Cecil Hotel here for a true-crime/horror podcast junkie like me to appreciate. However, I do feel that the novel lost it's way towards the end - trying to be all things to all people perhaps. It's definitely worth reading and I'm keen to see more from this author.


