There’s only one book that I started and did not finish, and I regret that to this day.
Wonder how it all turned out.
Well not really, because it was nonfiction, about past and current events, but still.
Nonetheless, however, despite, irrespective … this latest book? Sucked.
The salutations and praise heaped on its covers? Encouraging, yet wholly undeserved.
Wait—that’s not entirely fair. Somebody liked it.
Now, I’m a big fan of apocalyptic fiction … fact, too, for that matter but the make-believe stuff is really interesting, mainly because I like seeing/hearing/reading others’ ideas about the coming end.
Morbid, p’raps, but hear me out. Or not. Plenty of other stuff to read.
This, tho’? Not recommended, but you (Other Person You) should read it for yourself, reach your own conclusions, ‘cuz this might be your thing. Or “thang,” as it t’were.
Anyhoo, Paul Tremblay’s “Cabin at the End of the World” is a little too smug, a bit too preachy, and overally unimpressive.
Why?
Too much of the author’s perspective/view seeps onto the pages, barring escape into the story.
Methinks the debt owed by the author to the reader for a good story remains unpaid.
Interesting premise … manspouses and their foreign-adopted daughter (of course) go away to get away and four strangers with visions of the end posit an impossible choice to upend their lives. I like the metaphor for the shirts, but otherwise it was a big meh.
AND and, it espoused selfishness … fcuk the world, I gots mine.
Now, in a similar situation, Half (methinks) would have no problem making a choice, and neither would I. theKid might object, hope so anyway, but theKid wouldn’t get a vote, because theKid is biased … likes Half and other half fairly equally, so there’s that.
Tremblay’s story offers a variation on the question: if you could go back to 1932 and kill Hitler, would you?
The possibility might actually exist … ask Ponomarenko—oh wait, he vanished.
But if science has solved the conundrum of time travel (I see you Large Hadron Collider) can you imagine how jacked the present would be? All the mistakes, remixed.
Kennedy not assassinated, but WW3 over Cuba.
Hitler never rises to power, but the Jews are still homeless.
Lincoln lives, but Reconstruction triggers a second Civil War.
Tesla’s brilliance captures energy from the ether, fossil fuels are obsolete by the end of the 19th century, and we transverse the fifth dimension. But there would be trash on Mars. We’ve already gotten started on that. Thanks a lot smug, resistantly-bald, speech-impeded, oily, musky affront African-American jerkweed. Ruined Twitter, and I wasn’t even a fan. The heck is “X”?
Ice Cube owned him, tho’. That was funny.
Anyhoo, humanity has been, is, and will always be a dumpster fire of used sanitary napkins and furry cheese.
And where there is apocalypse, there is hope.
Not for that book, tho’. No recommend.