- Bullying At Work: How to Confront and Overcome It
by Andrea Adams with Neil Crawford - Philosophy For Dummies (UK Edition)
by Martin Cohen - Heidi
by Johanna Spyri - Pravda: Inside the Soviet News Machine
by Angus Roxburgh - The Official British Rail Book of Trains for Young People
by Michael Bowler - Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2 Manual published by Amstrad
- Night of the Crash Test Dummies: A Far Side Collection
by Gary Larson - Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury - I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan
by "Alan Partridge" - Along Lost Lines
by Paul Atterbury - Jennifer Government
by Max Barry - The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins - Catching Fire (Hunger Games, Book 2)
by Suzanne Collins - Mockingjay (Hunger Games Trilogy) by Suzanne Collins
- Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy
by Jostein Gaarder - Tony Hart: A Portrait of My Dad
by Carolyn Ross - The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex
by Mark Kermode - Booky Wook 2: This time it's personal
by Russell Brand - Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell - Come Lucky April (also published as After the Plague)
by Jean Ure - Watchers at the Shrine
by Jean Ure - At Home: A Short History of Private Life
by Bill Bryson - Z For Zachariah (Puffin Teenage Fiction)
by Robert C O'Brien
This is a book I've been aware of for some time, as a fan of post-apocalyptic literature, but it's escaped being read as it seems to be out of print and tracking down a copy isn't easy. In the end I ordered it from Linlithgow Library, who got it from a high school library in Bathgate for me. Turns out it was a very popular text for GCSE and Standard Grade English courses in the 80s, and when Abby saw I was reading it, she said she read it herself at school. We did Lord of the Flies as our Officially-Sanctioned Depressing-As-Hell Course Text.
Possibly it's just as well I didn't read it at school - being made to read something at school is usually the quickest short-cut to hating a book forever. With the extremely notable exception of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is my favourite novel ever, I hated every course text I touched. I ended up really, really liking Z For Zachariah, so there you go. The Amazon reviews are mixed - some people loved it, and others found it too slowly-paced or too depressing. Those are easy accusations to level at it, but sort of miss the point.
The book is set in the aftermath of a nuclear war. It takes the form of a very detailed diary written by Ann Burden, a teenage girl who lives in an isolated valley that has somehow escaped from the impact of the war. It has it's own weather system that has kept it free from contamination. However, her family leave the valley to look for survivors and never return - presumably they are poisoned by the toxic landscape - and so Ann spends many months alone.
The format of the book lends itself to a lot of description and detail, and Ann's personality really jumps off the page. I love well-developed characters - she really does seem realistic, credible and complex. As a girl living on a farm, she's also practical and independent, with many skills that aid her survival, and she seems to cope well with being alone. You're given a real insight into her hopes, dreams and feelings. There's a lot to like about that, and a lot to like about a practical and capable heroine.
Everything gets complicated by the arrival of a stranger in her valley. She has no idea whether to trust him, and observes him from a place of hiding until she gets a chance to assess whether he's a threat or not. He arrives in a protective suit, but soon strips it off when he realises the valley is safe. However, there are two streams in the valley, and one of them is contaminated. After bathing in it, he becomes extremely ill. Ann takes pity on him, and despite her concerns about whether he's a threat to her safety, she nurses him back to health. They have a complex relationship which doesn't always go smoothly. He's initially very weak but keen to make long-term plans for them to be self-sufficient in the valley. Eventually, though, as he recovers, he becomes controlling and hostile, and one night he attempts to force his way into Ann's bed. After that, things go quite badly wrong.
I won't give away any more as it will turn into a huge spoiler alert (this has been a bit spoilery already, so sorry about that), but it gets quite exciting as you live in Ann's claustrophobic and angst-ridden world. She's stuck in a confined space with a man she can't trust, and she has to decide what to do to survive. She eventually cooks up a plan - the ending of the book is an extremely open one, presenting a couple of possibilities, one positive, one much less so, but there's hope in there.
I thought it was a brilliant insight into people's psychology and relationships, and what happens when you get two people in a claustrophobically close environment, where they're both in danger and both have different issues and priorities. The book goes through seemingly realistic phases in the relationship between Ann and her visitor, as she begins to realise what he might do and the risks he poses in a world where there is no-one else to turn to, and that she can't easily escape from.
It's a deep book in which not enough happens to satisfy some people, so I can understand the "boring" accusation, but that misses the point a bit. It's not an action thriller, it's looking at one specific aspect of a post-apocalyptic world, and that's the isolation and desperation it forces people into, and how they might cope - or not - with it.
I found it a real page-turner, which has given me lots of ideas for my own writing. It also presents interesting questions on whether we can take the evidence presented to us at face value. An interesting reading of the book would be how reliable Ann is a witness. Was her visitor really dangerous, or did she just perceive him that way? How far did she push him into acting the way he did? How far did desperation drive him? Who was to blame for the stand-off that resulted between them? These are not neat and tidy things to resolve, and the "Ann - good, Man - evil bastard" interpretation some people have come up with is generally far too simplistic.
The only thing that seemed to jar with me a little was that it felt like a rather old-fashioned book, but then I suppose it was written nearly 40 years ago, when some social attitudes were different. Also, a rural American community would have different attitudes to an urban one, so maybe that's perfectly reasonable. Some of Ann's ideas and observations felt rather out of place today, but then a lot has changed socially in a very short time, so it's fair enough.
The book was adapted for the screen in 1984, when the BBC dramatised it as part of their Play for Today series. I don't think it's been broadcast more than once or twice, but the whole thing is on YouTube and I've started watching it. They've shifted the action to rural Wales instead of America, but I think the rest is fairly faithful to the book, so I'll watch it and let you know what I make of it. Even the first few minutes create a powerful impression, though, with some beautiful location shots of a quiet valley, and some very haunting music.
I'm really glad I read this.
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by Lisa Pritchard
