LIGHT PERPETUAL (2021)

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As a reader who loves stories of alternative lives, the plot immediately caught my attention. A group of shoppers at a Woolworth's in London on November 25, 1944, are suddenly incinerated including five children. Who might they have been? What lives might they have lived?

FIRST SENTENCE "The light is grey and sullen; a smoulder, a flare choking on the soot of its own burning, and leaking only a little of its power into the visible spectrum."

An extraordinary prologue describing the coming explosion in slow motion is unforgettable. Then time returns to normal and the destruction and death is revealed. From there the author constructs new lives for the children by showing the reader snapshots from the lives Alec, Vern, Ben, and sisters Val and Jo might have lived over a period of years as the world changed. Although the characters are the author's creation, the event actually took place and five children were among those who died which makes the stories all the more poignant. The reader is constantly reminded that none of these lives were lived.

Thanks to Francis Spufford, Scribner and NetGalley for a digital copy; opinions are my own.
Publication Date was May 18, 2021 #LightPerpetual #NetGalley

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THE WORD EXCHANGE (2014)

The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I don't read too many science fiction books, but the premise of The Word Exchange was too tempting to pass up. While I was reading, news articles and stories constantly popped up in the media that reinforced the possibility of Alena Graedon's imagined future being much, much closer than one would like to admit. And although you can read a hardback, I was given an electronic copy, which made the experience rather eerie.

Called “a dystopian novel for the digital age”, the story takes place in the not too distant future when print in all its forms has pretty much disappeared. People rely on an advanced type of cell phone called a Meme for all types of communication, but these devices are so closely attuned to their owners that they can sense needs and can provide an answer, a word, hail a cab, or order take-out before being instructed to do so.

Anana Johnson's father has disappeared leaving her one clue: ALICE. Doug Johnson has been close to publishing the very last print edition of the North American Dictionary of the English Language (NADEL). The search for her father intensifies as a pandemic called “word flu” takes over the city and people lose not only words but ultimately the ability to speak.

The book is divided into 26 dictionary entries and the tale is told by two characters as journal entries. In fact, everything about The Word Exchange is clever and inventive. Unfortunately I didn't feel any real connection to the characters nor was there any real sense of dread communicated even when situations might have demanded it. The work seems more of an intellectual puzzle.

Although I finished the book, it took me much longer than it should have. It just seemed to drag on. I found it tedious to check foot notes on my Kindle.

Title: The Word Exchange
Author: Alena Graedon
Genre: Speculative, Dystopian Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 0385537654
No. of Pages: 384 pages
Copyright: April 8, 2014
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Source: NetGalley

BOTTOM LINE: I am sure there is an audience for this book, but it's not me.

DISCLOSURE: Invited by NetGalley to request and receive this title for an honest review.

Alena Graedon was born in Durham, NC, and is a graduate of Carolina Friends School, Brown University, and Columbia University’s MFA program. She was Manager of Membership and Literary Awards at the PEN American Center before leaving to finish The Word Exchange, her first novel, with the help of fellowships at several artist colonies. Her writing has been translated into nine languages. She lives in Brooklyn. (Source: Random House)

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Replay (1998)

Replay by Ken Grimwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What if you could live your life over again? That's the question at the heart of Ken Grimwood's cult classic. Even though we have the movie Groundhog Day and now Kate Atkinson's masterpiece of a book Life After Life, Replay comes from a slightly different angle. It took me less than two days to read because I couldn't put it down. Highly recommended.

In Groundhog Day, the same day day is lived over and over again until a lesson is learned. In Life After Life, choices made and the resulting circumstances conspire to cause death and rebirth with a possible goal to be achieved. But in Replay the reader is treated to the possibility of exploring completely different lives knowing the exact time of death if not of rebirth. It's a fascinating conceit and the author has written a variety of options one might choose in such a situation.

This is not science fiction. This is speculative fiction that asks "What if?" And it is a heck of a good story.

If like me, you were in college in the 1960s, you will have the fun of recognizing details and differences in the world we live in today.

A middle-aged man, with a less than satisfactory existence, has a heart attack at his desk and awakes to find himself eighteen again. What choices will he make that will change the trajectory of his life?

My daughter suggested this book to me when I pitched Kate Atkinson's Life After Life to her. I finally picked it up the other day because it was due back at the library and I had already used up all my renewals. One day later  I was finished reading but not finished thinking about this amazing book, which for me falls under the heading Books You Might Have Missed.

Ken Grimwood died in 2003 at the age of 59 of a heart attack at his home in Santa Barbara, California.

The Hunger Games (2008)

I finished The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, a few miles south of St. Louis, Michigan on the way to our Holt Family Christmas in Mt. Pleasant on December 26th. I don't like to read in the car but I had to know how this first part of the trilogy would end.

Science Fiction is not generally a genre to which I am attracted; but if the category is instead Speculative Fiction, "that extrapolates from some phenomenon or theory and postulates 'What if?' ", I am often intrigued. 

Although this is considered a Young Adult novel, the ideas are compelling ranging  from the huge gap between the ruling class living in obscene wealth while the rest of the population is near starvation to the emphasis on cruel mass entertainment. At some point Katniss remarks that everyone has broken some law or other to survive. You'd have to be blind to not see parallels in our own world.