Plague

I read this in early April, when the UK was in lockdown because of COVID-19. I had a hazy memory of it from when I was a teenager, and thought it might be an interesting book to read during a pandemic.

This book is dark. And heavy. I'm not sure reading it was a great choice. Nearly everyone has died, very rapidly. Children have watched kid siblings die, and nursed their parents to the vile end. The hero comes home from an off-grid school trip, and finds the bodies of her parents rotting upstairs. The book covers a very short period of time - after the plague has already mostly happened, but in the first few days while the survivors try to deal with the emotional impact. So there are glints of hope, but the ending - our two heroes leaving show more London with no real idea of where to go or what will happen next, and only managing to escape because the checkpoint soldier has died at his post - is definitely not hugs and puppies and the cavalry saving the day.

It's interesting, it contains lots of elements that I would have thought of as 'modern' young adult. One protagonist is muslim, and dealing with the issues of wanting to fit in at school while his family pressures him to conform to their rules and religion. Or would do, if they weren't all dead in a plague. It's also got a very environmentalist 'well, this is probably all our own fault, I bet we made this plague when messing around with biological weapons, and we shouldn't all trust the government, we should live in smaller communities and take more responsibility for ourselves.'

But it does model how to be human in impossible times. Fran stays and nurses Shahid through the plague, even though it feels pointless. She keeps going one day at a time, and she writes her journal. 'I'm asking you to have the will to go on, that's all'. show less

This is the first of the reviews of the books in this series; in the next two days I will review the other two.

While a plague that wipes out mankind is a common theme in science fiction for adults, this is one of the few that deals with that theme for juveniles. It is also unique because it deals with an outbreak in one city - London - and deals with the immediate crises that result. We do not know what the rest of the world must deal with and this gives the book an interesting intensity. The main character, Fran, returns from a camping trip to find London blocked off and quarantined. She manages to get in and finds two people, her friend Harriet and a stranger named Shahid, who become her companions. The isolation is complete - London show more has no power and most phones are dead. They speculate about the nature of the plague, but until you read the sequel you don't know what it really was like. This is what makes the book effective and a standout book in the genre. show less

This book gave a fairly simplified version of the immediate aftermath of an apocalyptic event. I thought the author did a very good job of showing the lack of information available to the characters following the breakdown of government and communication systems. The detachment felt by the characters who lived through the epidemic was also portrayed well.

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