478 pages
français language
Published Aug. 29, 2016 by Payot & Rivages.
Un soir d’hiver à l’Elgin Theatre de Toronto, le célèbre acteur Arthur Leander s’écroule sur scène, en pleine représentation du Roi Lear. Plus rien ne sera jamais comme avant. Dans un monde où la civilisation s’est effondrée, une troupe itinérante d’acteurs et de musiciens parcourt la région du lac Michigan et tente de préserver l’espoir en jouant du Shakespeare et du Beethoven. Ceux qui ont connu l’ancien monde l’évoquent avec nostalgie, alors que la nouvelle génération peine à se le représenter. De l’humanité ne subsistent plus que l’art et le souvenir. Peut-être l’essentiel.
A book I have kept thinking of years after reading it. Great prose, plot, characters, universe - it has it all.
My favorite scenes are of Jeevan and Frank in Toronto as the pandemic is unfolding.
This was recommended to me and I went in knowing very little about it.
I found it to be a really gripping novel; hard to put down. I was really excited to see how the characters lives intersected and how they handled the trauma of the devastating pandemic.
The book tells the story of the characters at various stages of their lives ranging from many years before the pandemic, to around 20 years after. This gives a really interesting perspective on the characters, and keeps the pace of the book fast and interesting.
Highly recommended!
There was a lot in this I really enjoyed. Interesting characters and a fascinating set of situations, all very tightly plotted and woven together in a system that slowly became visible throughout the novel. The structure and style of it has a lot of similarities to The Passage - something the book slyly acknowledges at one point.
However, I can only give this four and not five stars because the ending - or, more accurately, the climactic point of the narrative - feels too short and brief, almost perfunctory in the way it happens. When I was getting towards the end, I was thinking that I'd missed something in the blurb and this was just the first book of a pair or a series. There was enough going on and being built up I couldn't see how it could be resolved in that space - and I'm not sure it …
There was a lot in this I really enjoyed. Interesting characters and a fascinating set of situations, all very tightly plotted and woven together in a system that slowly became visible throughout the novel. The structure and style of it has a lot of similarities to The Passage - something the book slyly acknowledges at one point.
However, I can only give this four and not five stars because the ending - or, more accurately, the climactic point of the narrative - feels too short and brief, almost perfunctory in the way it happens. When I was getting towards the end, I was thinking that I'd missed something in the blurb and this was just the first book of a pair or a series. There was enough going on and being built up I couldn't see how it could be resolved in that space - and I'm not sure it was, leaving me a bit empty when it finished.
A really great imagining of sweeping pandemic and complete societal collapse bogged down by too many side stories of half-formed characters and convenient contrived coincidences that detract from what could have been a fantastic piece of post-apocalyptic fiction.
This story follows people connected to Arthur Leander, an actor who dies in the first (and last) chapters of the book. These characters are mostly survivors of a superflu which kills off 99.99% of the human race. The title comes from an elaborate comic book drawn by Arthur's ex-wife Miranda.
The book is primarily set 20 years after the apocalypse, and focuses on a traveling band of musicians and actors, who play classical music and perform Shakespeare. The theme here is the survival of culture more than the survival of humanity.
As the bard said, the play's the thing, and this post-apocalyptic world feels like a play. No gritty realism, starving dogs, or warlords. People get by. This theme carries into the flashbacks, showing various of Arthur's connections sleepwalking through their lives.
The storytelling is rich, but for me the characters feel flat. The jumps are interesting, but the tale …
This story follows people connected to Arthur Leander, an actor who dies in the first (and last) chapters of the book. These characters are mostly survivors of a superflu which kills off 99.99% of the human race. The title comes from an elaborate comic book drawn by Arthur's ex-wife Miranda.
The book is primarily set 20 years after the apocalypse, and focuses on a traveling band of musicians and actors, who play classical music and perform Shakespeare. The theme here is the survival of culture more than the survival of humanity.
As the bard said, the play's the thing, and this post-apocalyptic world feels like a play. No gritty realism, starving dogs, or warlords. People get by. This theme carries into the flashbacks, showing various of Arthur's connections sleepwalking through their lives.
The storytelling is rich, but for me the characters feel flat. The jumps are interesting, but the tale before the apocalypse is far better than afterward. The religious zealout who plays the part of the villain is caricatured at first, and less believable because of it.
This won an Arthur C Clarke award for best science fiction novel of 2015. I liked it, but I didn't love it.
