THE TURNING OF THE WORLD by John Privilege

5 GOLD stars

Contemporary drama, post apocalyptic

On Amazon UK HERE
On Amazon.com HERE

This was a bit of a 'couldn't put it down' book, for me.  It's my favourite genre at the moment anyway, but this is something different from other slightly Hollywoodised examples I've read.

Bobby Reynolds is a Canadian living in Northern Ireland with his wife when the Quang-Tri flu pandemic erupts. The novel is about the aftermath, from the end of normal life to ~ what?

The reason I liked this book so much is that, apart from being so well written that I had to keep saying 'just one more chapter' when Him Indoors wanted me to put my Nexus down and watch Spartacus with him, (i.e., one of those books that damn well ought to be traditionally published), it's realistic.  I suppose.  Who knows?  Maybe other countries would fare differently from Ireland, with all its in-fighting.  The story takes its characters through the childlike belief that 'the authorities' really will make everything all right, the discovery that those in power do not always tell the truth to the public (no, really?!), and the sorting of wheat from chaff: the survivors and the victims.  It shows how some personalities flourish under adverse circumstances, some get harder and more self-serving, some brutal, and how some just give up.  

There are some moments of happiness in the lives of the comunity around which most of the book centres, but John Privilege has also shown something that, sadly, is probably the truth: that living in the aftermath of a global disaster is not all about the swashbuckling waving of swords, middle-aged housewives suddenly becoming handy with a firearm, and the occasional euphoric realisation that we don't need all that electricity and internet and stuff to be truly fulfilled.  It's mostly just cold, miserable, and boring; it's back to the Dark Ages but with the country ruined and filled with people whose instinct is just to take what they need in whatever way they can.  This book is far from boring, though.  It's one of those I kept thinking about it when I wasn't reading it.  I liked it very, very much indeed, recommend it highly and will read anything else this writer cares to publish.

No zombies, but others just as frightening...

THE AMERICAN POLICEMAN by John Privilege is reviewed HERE