Quiet Earth

Intense psychological thriller wrapped up in a post-apocalypse story in which a man wakes up in a motel and finds that everyone else in the world has vanished. Virtually everything that happens in the book is filtered through his perceptions, and he lives on the edge of terror throughout most of the book. The secret of what has happened leads him back to the beginning, and the reader is left to sort out what is real and what isn't. The book feels like a vividly experienced nightmare, the kind you can't wake up from even when you seem to. Brilliantly written and worked out, the kind of book you maybe don't want to read alone at night. Highly recommended. Wish there was a nicer, hardcover edition of this available--used copies seem to show more start at about $275. show less

This month's choice for #AYearofNZLit is a classic work of Kiwi Science Fiction...

Wikipedia and Goodreads tell us that

Born in England in 1942, Craig Harrison came to New Zealand in 1966 to lecture in English at Massey University, and stayed there to become a prize-winning New Zealand fiction writer, playwright, and teacher. He has written novels, short stories, junior fiction, plays, satirical works, and television comedies.

The Quiet Earth was his third novel, and is his best-known work. It was made into a New Zealand SF film in 1985, and a quick Google search shows that its enigmatic ending is still generating discussion nearly forty years after it was made. It's instructive to look at the respective cover images, (see them at my blog, show more link is below) ...

Bernard Beckett, in the Introduction, points out that the reason that a novel featuring one character alone on the planet is so rare in literature, is because it is so difficult to do. It's hard to devise a credible set of circumstances that could lead to such a situation, and the other challenge is the extremely limited palette the writer gives himself.

With nobody for the protagonist to talk to, nobody to generate external conflict, the novel must develop through a single character and his response to the nightmare scenario. A short story has permission to observe, to linger inside impressions and fears, but a novel of this type avoids storytelling at its peril. Harrison, who acknowledges his echoing of a childhood favourite, Robinson Crusoe, instead embraces it. (Introduction, p. viii)

All the action takes place on New Zealand's North Island, as Hobson journeys with increasing desperation in search of signs of life. The clocks have stopped, the phone lines are dead, the radio is nothing but static and the electricity has failed. The creepiest element is that there are no bodies: a crashed airliner has no people in it. Whatever has happened has made every living thing vanish.

Well, not quite. An earthworm under the soil has survived. But what is Hobson going to eat if there is no livestock? There being no other woman, there is no prospect of life getting a fresh start in some way. How is he to survive, and to what purpose should he control his despair?

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/08/26/the-quiet-earth-1981-by-craig-harrison/ show less

Klarer Lesebefehl für Fans des Films!