![]() ![]() ![]() It's a remarkable narrative both in conception and execution. Secrets and truths are uncovered one by one. Through the lurid blood-letting, events build slowly, broodingly. Almost every action - changing oil, planting crops, watching a bear chasing down deer - is rendered with utter authenticity. ![]() He takes risks, stumbles occasionally (Hig's memories of his wife range from mawkish to maudlin), but evokes the essence of things marvellously. Heller writes sparely, sometimes stunningly, in brief bursts of memory and thought that crackle with intensity. Green patches in the forest and in Hig's own life begin to grow we end with that paradoxical thing, a post-apocalyptic novel that looks on the bright side. It's a journey that doesn't lead to any idyll or easy answers, but it begins an arduous progress towards redemption and regeneration, in which characters are unpeeled layer by layer. And a half-heard radio message, plus the death of a nine-year-old boy, eventually start him on a journey that he hopes will take him beyond mere survival. ![]() He persists in keeping contact with a nearby and not altogether convincing group of Mennonites, who may still be disease carriers. But unlike Bangley, he doesn't revel in the killing. ![]()
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