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A review by suzemo
Far North by Marcel Theroux
3.0
I liked this. I liked it better than 3 stars, but it didn't quite hit the 4 star mark for me.
It's a first person narrative in a post-apocalyptic landscape. I tend to prefer first person perspectives in PA (and dystopian, which this is assuredly not) because seeing this world through the eyes of someone struggling through it makes it feel stronger much of the time.
There isn't a whole lot of plot, but the descriptions are wonderful and clean. This book is not overly wordy, doesn't have complicated language because it's told from the viewpoint of a survivor. Someone who saw the end of the plentiful times we lived through, but not really (Makepeace's family were living in the frontier of Far North trying to get away from the excesses of the society we live in now).
Makepeace Hatfield is the last of a survivor of a frontier town who ventures out to find something more. The landscape and life is somewhere between [b:The Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320606344s/6288.jpg|3355573] (not as soul crushing and bleak) and Mad Max (though not quite as violent). The survival parts were interesting. Looking at how people who formerly lived in a time of plenty were faring and seeing how the more "primitive" lifestyles also fared was interesting.
I feel it is, in part, a cautionary tale of where we are heading with our excesses, over-population, and environmental destruction, It's interesting to me that I read this not long after [b:Parable of the Sower|52397|Parable of the Sower|Octavia E. Butler|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312501210s/52397.jpg|59258], which takes place in what you can imagine was going on in the "civilized" lands while this is what's happening in the frontier.
There are a couple of odd turns, and there was even one thing that made me go back in the book to look for what I missed, which was a little jarring, but overall it was pretty decent.
It's a first person narrative in a post-apocalyptic landscape. I tend to prefer first person perspectives in PA (and dystopian, which this is assuredly not) because seeing this world through the eyes of someone struggling through it makes it feel stronger much of the time.
There isn't a whole lot of plot, but the descriptions are wonderful and clean. This book is not overly wordy, doesn't have complicated language because it's told from the viewpoint of a survivor. Someone who saw the end of the plentiful times we lived through, but not really (Makepeace's family were living in the frontier of Far North trying to get away from the excesses of the society we live in now).
Makepeace Hatfield is the last of a survivor of a frontier town who ventures out to find something more. The landscape and life is somewhere between [b:The Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320606344s/6288.jpg|3355573] (not as soul crushing and bleak) and Mad Max (though not quite as violent). The survival parts were interesting. Looking at how people who formerly lived in a time of plenty were faring and seeing how the more "primitive" lifestyles also fared was interesting.
I feel it is, in part, a cautionary tale of where we are heading with our excesses, over-population, and environmental destruction, It's interesting to me that I read this not long after [b:Parable of the Sower|52397|Parable of the Sower|Octavia E. Butler|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312501210s/52397.jpg|59258], which takes place in what you can imagine was going on in the "civilized" lands while this is what's happening in the frontier.
There are a couple of odd turns, and there was even one thing that made me go back in the book to look for what I missed, which was a little jarring, but overall it was pretty decent.