It Can't Happen Here - Sinclair Lewis

An anti-immigrant, fear-mongering demagogue runs for President of the United States

 - and wins. It can't happen here. Right?

Written in the mid-1930s, Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here tells the fictional account of the rise of President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, an ignorant, small-town nobody who, by playing on the fears and insecurities of white working-class America and by dividing loyalties to his opposition, manages to worm his way into the White House. And once he's in, it is a matter of weeks before he reveals himself to be an apparently unstoppable dictator.

The land of the free becomes a state of terror. Within days, the President gives himself absolute power to enact whatever legislation he sees fit, no opposition allowed. He gives guns and a uniform to his most fervent supporters and sends them back to their communities as his defenders. The press is censored and any dissenters imprisoned under terrible conditions. It's written as a satire, and is clearly intended to be very shocking - and the violence of it is. (The rapid timescale - not so much. Not in 2017. Just look at how quick another president was to sign his Executive Orders in the week after his inauguration.)

Looking at the context of the time Lewis was writing, and once more you can draw parallels. Of course, this was written in response to Hitler's rise to power in Germany - and I'm quite sure that most ordinary Germans would have thought their country too civilised for anything like that to happen, just as much as Americans. In America, and around the world, this was the time of the Great Depression. It Can't Happen Here gives a little insight into why desperate people might consider democracy and freedom a fair exchange for a bit more money, better job security and a more comfortable lifestyle. More comfortable, that is, as long as you don't make a fuss.

All this is seen through the eyes of Doremus Jessup, an aging newspaper editor who lives in comfortable circumstances in the region formerly known as Vermont. He's a liberal-minded man, wary of Windrip from the start, and gradually is drawn into an underground resistance. But what is the best way to use his power in such circumstances? If he draws attention to himself, he'll be locked up or killed, and what use is that to anyone? But if he stays safe, he's just allowing the regime to be normalised. It's a fine line.

Lewis makes it quite clear that liberal complacency is just as much to blame as the ignorance and malice that actively brings a tyrant into power. By saying "Oh, it can't happen here," people don't bother doing anything to prevent it from happening. And by then, it's too late.

And so, It Can't Happen Here is as relevant a warning today as it was when it was written; we can already see some of our nations taking the steps towards towards a future like the one represented in the book. I'd say this is an extreme version, but it's that sort of complacency that enables such systems to take hold. It can't happen here? It's up to all of us to make sure it doesn't.

Sci Fi Month: The Race - Nina Allan (book review)

Find out more about Sci Fi Month here.

I admit it, I bought this book without any knowledge of what it was about because the cover was pretty! That worked out pretty well for The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet earlier this year, which I still can't shut up. It seems that I have a weakness for pictures of starry skies. (Just look at my blog background for further proof of this.)

The Race is a book in five parts, each one focusing on a different character, but these five parts make up two stories which are linked in some way. The first part, "Jenna" is set in a bleak future, a place recognisable as the South East of England, but in a dismal landscape that has been ruined and poisoned by fracking. Jenna and her brother Del try to make their way in that world, in a town whose main attraction is the illegal racing of smartdogs - greyhounds which have been genetically modified with human DNA. Del is an angry, bitter young man, only softened by the birth of his daughter Luz Maree (known as Lumey.) But when Lumey is kidnapped, everything changes.

Nina Allan creates a convincing society in the first part of The Race, a world that draws you in. The narrator, Jenna, is smart and endearing, but I felt that her brother Del's characterisation did not ring true. He just didn't seem all that bothered about his beloved daughter's safety, and as he focuses on raising the ransom money by winning a smartdog race, his priorities shift towards the winning; he seems to almost forget about why he's doing it. If the end goal was anything else, I could accept him being sidetracked, but not when the life of his little girl is at stake!

The second part, "Christy" switches to our own world, or something very like it. I was warned by Ellie's review that if I was expecting the book to be all about fracking and smartdogs, I'd be disappointed, so I went into The Race without any particular expectations. Yet as I engrossed myself in part one, I still got drawn into Jenna's world and story, then felt a little bit cheated as Allan revealed how the stories fitted together. When you read a sci-fi novel, you know it's fiction, and yet you trust the author to let you suspend your disbelief for a while. But within the "Christy" segment, Allan gave a new context to "Jenna," and it felt like a cop-out, at first. If she'd given us the stories in a different order, there may not have been that feeling of betrayal - but also, the novel would be less remarkable. And there are one or two hints that the link between the two settings is not as straight-forward as it initially appears.

The third part, "Alex" follows on from Christy's story from a different perspective, giving a sort of commentary on the novel the characters are in, where different timelines and lives bleed into each other in ways that they shouldn't. Then for the last two parts we return to Jenna's world, several years after Lumey's induction. Yet there are inconsistencies here too. Place names, spellings have changes since the first part, and we seem to have travelled further away from the real-world setting than would be likely in the time that passed since "Jenna." It's almost as though every character has not only a slightly different perception of reality, but that reality itself is different for everybody. What if everyone lives in intersecting but subtly different worlds?

The Race is an intellectually fascinating read, full of deep ideas about communication, about perception of the world, and with a bit of meta-commentary on the writing of a novel. It takes the familiar and makes it strange. The plot is a bit sprawling and untidy, but full of twists and revelations, and I appreciated that Allan does not spoon-feed the reader with all the answers, but leaves you to draw your own conclusions. But unfortunately, after being lured in by an incredible first segment, then having the rug pulled out from under my feet, I lost a bit of my emotional investment in the actual story. Still, it is a book with a lot to say, and I think it would benefit from a second reading to see what I missed first time around.

I really hate "looking into the mirror" descriptions but this is
actually an important moment in the book.

Shelve next to:

• Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
• The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
• The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing

Z for Zachariah

While looking through a box of old books from my childhood, I found a dystopian YA novel written long before dystopian YA Novels were A Thing. I read Z for Zachariah in year 8 for English, the year when we really started learning about Literature in earnest. My teacher was Mrs Leppard, and she split the class up into small groups to read and discuss one of a selection of science fiction and speculative fiction. Animal Farm, was one of the others on offer. I remember sitting with three other kids in the cloakroom or the library - (Jo Holt, Sam Irving and one other - possibly Mark Harrison) feeling, even then, that this was what it was to be a student.

Written in the 1970s, Z for Zachariah is set after a nuclear war wipes out masses of the population - perhaps most of the world, perhaps just a region. It is written as the diary of a teenage girl, Ann, whose family farm in a valley has escaped contamination. Her family ventured out of the valley to investigate, and were never seen again. With only the company of her dog, Faro, and the cows and chickens, Ann survives by farming and with resources from the nearby store. Then, one day, a stranger comes to the valley, dressed in a radiation suit. Although Ann is wary of the newcomer at first, she comes to his aid when he becomes sick from swimming in a contaminated stream, and they strike up a tentative friendship. But can he really be trusted?

I had very vivid memories of the first half of Z for Zachariah from reading it at thirteen; we spent several lessons reading the novel slowly, and discussing it, and I still, seventeen years on, could picture Ann's valley, her day-to-day life living without electricity in one green place surrounded by dead land. I recalled the arrival of John Loomis, her wariness of him, his sickness and Ann nursing him back to health. But I think we didn't have enough lessons - or perhaps we got sidetracked in our small groups - to read the entire novel, and the ending was more vague. I probably didn't understand all of what was being implied, or why Loomis went from being an ally to a threat one night. And I remember hurrying through the last chapters on the last day of term, so that I could hand my school book back to my teacher. (I since bought a copy in a charity shop or used bookstore, but hadn't reread it until yesterday.) But it lingered with me. There is a real sense of claustrophobia, when Ann is hiding in the valley. She can't leave, because there is only one radiation suit and Loomis guards it jealously. He gradually proves to be a complex and chilling character, a dangerous control freak, and Ann is trapped with him with no one else for miles around - or further - or anywhere.

Even now, in a bookish landscape full of apocalypses and dystopias, Z For Zachariah stands apart from the rest. It is effective in its simplicity: no totalitarian governments to bring down, no factions, hunger games or political intrigue, just two people in one little corner of the world, trying to survive.

Book Club: Katie and Judith read Stephen King's The Stand - Book 3

After spending over a month reading The Stand and not a lot else, I finally finished it at the weekend. It's been a wild ride. Fictional superflu. Actual flu. 2-person book club meetins at home, in the pub, in Costa and on the beach. My poor book is rather ragged-looking after just one read, and it's going to be a relief not having to carry that massive tome around with me everywhere. It's been the rare occasion when I've almost - almost - wished for an e-reader instead. 

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.

Loose Ends

• By the end of Book 2, it still felt as though there was an awful lot of plot to go; the narrative was racing towards a conclusion before it felt ready - despite having already invested over a thousand pages in the book. How on earth was Stephen King going to tie up all the loose ends in the last 300? (That's almost the length of an ordinary paperback novel, and yet it seemed pitifully small.)
• Well, one means he used was to simply cut off entire threads of story. The first few chapters see one character after another come to a sudden and brutal end, some before their stories really felt like they were beginning. Of the three spies sent to Randall Flagg's Las Vegas, two are dead within two chapters. Harold's story, too, is cut off suddenly; we are suddenly at the miserable end of his life, and see how he got there only in flashback. And Nadine. After years of grooming from Flagg to become his wife and the mother of monsters, one outburst and all his plans are thrown out of the window - literally!
• Narratively, this should be most unsatisfying. It breaks all the rules of storytelling. And yet, somehow it works. The sudden demises of Dayna and the Judge in the first chapters show how dangerous and terrifying an enemy Flagg is, how our heroes are ostensibly powerless against him, that he can thwart their schemes so quickly, and yet... he is not in control either. 
• One reason I was disappointed in Needful Things, one of King's other novels, was because it ended up in a bloodbath. Most of the characters ended up dead, and I stopped caring after a while. The Stand has a similar body count among the named cast, and yet it worked. The stakes were higher.

Sacrifice

• I could have kicked myself when he men from Boulder simply walked into Las Vegas and I finally realised what kind of story this was. How were four unarmed man going to do battle with Randall Flagg and his forces and live to tell the tale? They weren't meant to. That wasn't the plan. They were the sacrifice. And in retrospect it seemed obvious. The book is so full of Christian allegory - King even describes it as such in his introduction! Still, I shouted out in horror when I realised what Flagg had in store for the characters. 
• So why, if they just had to show up and die, did they have to walk instead of drive? If they'd taken a car, how much suffering might have been prevented? But the walk was important; a test of character and faith. And, as Judith pointed out, it was about timing. They arrived, Flagg's gathered everyone together to make a spectacle of them, and the Trashcan Man shows up with his nuclear bomb. And so the plot strands all come together. Brutal.

Stu

• Looking back over Mother Abagail's prophecy, I realised she didn't say that one character would die, she said that one would not reach the destination - and that was Stu. He falls in the desert and breaks his leg, and as his broken-hearted friends leave him behind, we learn that "they never saw Stu again." That was when I started to put the pieces together - because I was sure that Stu would survive, against all the odds. With the help of the dog, Kojak, and Tom Cullen, the surviving spy on his way home, Stu pulls through the impossible and heads back east towards Boulder.
• I actually found Stu's journey home the most suspenseful part of the entire book. We think the danger is over - and then he starts having nightmares about Frannie's baby, opening up new fears. No, no, it has to be all right! There aren't enough pages left to do the alternative justice. Small spoilers remind us that we haven't actually seen anything that's going on in Boulder since they left. 

The End:

• And then he arrives home to the worst news. The baby is alive - but it's got Captain Trips, the superflu that no one has ever survived. It's only a matter of time. But no. It can't die. Not this close to the end. Not after 1200 pages or so of waiting. And so I dared to hope that this child would have some sort of mutation that would allow it to throw off the disease - and when this turned out to be true I shouted "YES!" and punched the air. 
• Although, ultimately, there was no battle in the end (and how many epic fantasies don't have a battle? It's just taken for granted these days. Nice to mix up the expectations there!) the only survivors of the main cast are Frannie, Stu, and Tom Cullen. Apart from Harold's bomb, the Free Zone has been largely safe, though, most of the casualties happened in Vegas or on the way. The community is growing. Yet, even so, my prediction about starting again once more proved correct, if not in the way I expected. Because, despite the increasing growth of the Boulder community, people are moving away again. The system begins to show the same flaws and problems as in the previous America. The Free Zone is now full of anonymous strangers, and with anonymity comes loss of community. So Stu and Frannie, with their baby (and another on the way) decide to move away, start again, US history unwinding again. They're going back to the pioneer life, away from everyone, out into the unknown. Very Little House on the Prairie. I was even right about the book ending on Mother Abagail's farm with Stu, Frannie and the baby. Although I wasn't expecting the new society to be that small!
• Almost ending, I should say. The epilogue leaves us with a final glimpse of Randall Flagg, still out there, somewhere. And as I'm aware that there is some crossover with the Dark Tower series, of which I've only read the first two books, I'm wondering if that world is where he's ended up.

Ultimately, I found the ending a lot more satisfying than I'd expected to, based upon where book two left off. I've seen several people criticising the book for having a rushed ending, but I think there were good reasons for some storylines coming to a very sudden halt. Yes, The Stand has earned its place at the "good" end of King's work, and was definitely worth the time and emotional commitment invested into it. 

Book Club: Katie and Judith read Stephen King's The Stand - Book 2, Chapters 51-60.

This update is rather belated as I spent a week somewhat appropriately struck down with the flu. I never get flu - I think this is the second time in thirty years, and so the timing of this was rather hilarious.* In the second half of Book 2 of The Stand, all our good guys have come together and settled down in Boulder, Colorado, and are working together to form a new society, known as The Free Zone. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, the evil Randall Flagg has got his own community.

Spoilers aplenty! Read on at your own risk!

Life in the Free Zone

• Judith got very annoyed that even after the world's been turned upside-down, there seems to be the old expectations of gender roles: the women (ie Frannie) do the housework, while the men go out and do manual labour. Of course, we only really see the domestic arrangements of a few families. But Stu seemed surprised at first to see Frannie washing and mending when there are stores full of clothes for the taking. But that's no way to live - chuck out clothes instead of washing them. Still, Stu is a Good Egg and promises to take turns hand-washing the laundry (at least until the power's back on and "Frannie" can use a washing machine again.
• And anyway, what are they doing with all the rubbish, all the empty food cans and waste? I didn't see any mention of bin men. Is the water still on? Do they have a plumber? These are the details we want to know!
• Judith's grumbles of last week were that the Free Zone residents appeared to be recreating the same old way of life as they were familiar with from the old America. But money is useless now. Ownership doesn't seem to matter. If what you need is available, it's there for the taking - if it isn't, improvise. 
• Of course, these resources won't last forever. For now, the Free Zone residents just want to survive the winter.

The Committee

• There are a lot of committee meetings in this part of the book! And sure enough, most of the named protagonists are on the committee - it does seem a little bit cliquey, and we didn't much like Glen Bateman's conversation with Stu in the previous section, which seems to be all about how to ensure that their in-crowd get nominated. 
• One of their tasks is to organise a team of spies to go over to Las Vegas against Flagg, and I didn't feel at all comfortable with the way that this group of seven took responsibility for picking out their "volunteers" in their absence, in full knowledge of their probable fates. For two of the spies, at least - the Judge and Dayna - they would at least get to make an informed decision, even if they can't very well feel able to decline. But the third was the mentally challenged Tom Cullen, and that just doesn't sit right with me. But, although Tom is "not playing with a full deck," it seems that he's got the rest of his cards stashed away in his subconscious, so if you hypnotise him, he's able to understand and consent to being sent off on his own into mortal danger, even if he doesn't remember it afterwards. No, this did not sit well with me at all.

Nadine, Harold - and Larry

• It's a very black-and-white world: there are the good guys and there are Flagg's people. Nadine and Larry are on the line - they could go either way. One decision shapes both of their fates: when Nadine tries to seduce Larry, but he's having none of it. It seems quite rare in fiction for a character to actually resist temptation! So, good for Larry. It's just a shame bad consequences came of him making the right decision...
• Yet, as Judith pointed out, Larry cannot be held responsible for Nadine's actions, and if it was the moment that marked Nadine's downfall, Larry's choice of loyalty to Lucy over lust was the moment that marked his redemption. If he'd gone with Nadine, would he have been able to save her - or would she have dragged him down with her? (I see parallels of abusive relationships where one person thinks they can change another.)
• Instead, Nadine turns to Harold, and this is where his nastiness, his martyr complex and his venomous hatred turn his loyalties over to Flagg once and for all. I was still shocked by what happened next...

Wasted Characters?

• I was Most Displeased by the death of Nick Andros in Harold's explosion. Nick had been my favourite protagonist in the first book of The Stand. but once he arrived at Boulder he seemed to disappear somewhat. Sure, he sat on the committee, and his connection to Tom was a key plot point, but it felt rather as though King didn't know what to do with him, so got him blown up, instead! As Judith pointed out, his lack of a voice meant that he kind of got lost in the crowd once Boulder began filling up with people.
• Similarly, Mother Abagail, who was such a strong force for good, just vanished halfway through the book, returning to bring prophecies and then die. Her role seemed to be as a catalyst for plot events, rather than as an actual character.

Predictions for Book 3:

• That the focus will shift to the four remaining white (probably) male able-bodied members of the committee as they trek out to Las Vegas to confront Randall Flagg somehow.
• Somehow the four of them: Stu, Larry. Glen Bateman and Ralph (who we don't really know very well) have to take on Randall Flagg and his entire company. It seems like a doomed mission of foolishness, and I just don't know how they can hope to win in whatever battle is coming up. I'm sure they will defeat - if not destroy - Flagg, but King's got his work cut out to impress me with whatever deus ex machina he'll use to make this a battle and not a suicide mission.**
• Mother Abagail predicted that one member of the group will die. That seems to fit Larry's journey of character growth: redemption equals death. 
• Judith reckons that the book might end with the beginning of the battle.
• I think that whatever happens, the population will suffer even more great losses, and will end up starting another new society from scratch, with a very small and simple community. Perhaps it will end, after all, in Mother Abagail's farm.
• I'm pretty sure Stu and Frannie will survive, and we've had so much invested in Frannie's baby that I really hope that it will live too. As a family, they'll be a symbol of hope for the future in a broken world. Also I feel like Tom Cullen has a charmed aura of Author Protection. Despite all the odds, he'll be okay.

*Not hilarious.

Book Club: Katie and Judith read Stephen King's The Stand - Book 2, Chapters 43-50.

Spoiler alert: This post goes into a lot more detail than a general review. My literature-brain is at work.

Book one of The Stand saw most of the world's population killed by a super-deadly, weaponised version of the 'flu, engineered by the US military, and accidentally released into its own population. The few survivors are scattered and wandering, a few of them teaming up while looking for somewhere to go, something to do, now the world as they know it has come crashing down. They are being haunted by strange dreams and dark nightmares, seeming to call to them from across the country...

Introducing...

• Book one let us get to know the main cast of The Stand: Larry and Stu, Frannie and Nick, with glimpses into the lives of a couple of the bad guys, and brief sightings of the Dark Man, Randall Flagg, and an old lady called Mother Abagail, who seems to be his opposite number. Now we've figured them out, it's time to bring in a new supporting cast, to replace all the friends-and-relations wiped out by the virus.
• The problem I found is that the new characters do not yet feel as fully-formed as those we've already spent time befriending (or whatever the opposite is.) All the groups of travellers are getting bigger, but with each chapter bringing in a new point-of-view, both Judith and I found ourselves needing to take a little time reminding ourselves of which newcomers were travelling with which old faces. 
• We both found the narrative's treatment of the women newbies a little troubling. Nick, the Generally Good Egg, meets Julie, but as soon as she is introduced to his other companion, the simple-minded Tom Cullen, she stirs up trouble between them and Nick's dismissal of her (but not until after he's slept with her because of course) seems uncharacteristically brutal. I get that she was a troublemaker, I didn't like her right from the start, and obviously he's meant to have seen something inside her that is dangerous, but... I dunno. She felt very much like a lazy use of the "evil seductress" trope rather than a real person, and it didn't quite sit right with me. 
• And Judith was bothered by Larry's treatment of Lucy. He's "in love with" Nadine, but not so much that if he can't get together with her, he won't make do with Lucy as second best. Lucy, too, seemed like a trope, rather than a character: the woman who is with a man who doesn't love her, because she doesn't expect any better. Judith's read a lot of bad sci-fi ("or good sci-fi by men who know nothing about women") and is so familiar with and so tired of that kind of two-dimensional character.
• Of all the new characters, though, Nadine is the most interesting. I didn't trust her, right from the start; sneaking around behind Larry, rather than introducing herself to him. But on the surface, she seems decent enough: she loves children, doesn't believe in violence, is a virgin well into her thirties. And then it turns out she and the dark man go way back... Oh, she's never met him, as far as I can tell, but she's been dreaming of him since long before Captain Trips. Like Larry, she's walking the fine line between good and evil, but where Larry seems bad but will probably end up a hero, I have a very bad feeling about Nadine's plotline. I do not think it will end well at all.  

Doubles and contrasts

• My English Literature brain has noticed a lot of pairs, doubles and contrasts throughout this page. You've got the people dreaming of both Abagail and Flagg, with their heaven-and-hell symbolism, and I've just highlighted how I can see Nadine acting as a dark mirror for Larry's character development. Then we've got Tom Cullen and the Trashcan Man - both a little broken, but one all goodness and one all bad.

Apocalypse

• The Stand is not the first "post-Apocalyptic" book I've read; there do seem to be a lot of them about, but this is unusual in really living up to the description. It's surprisingly religious in some ways, with a good-versus-evil battle for souls, and a lot of biblical imagery. And we've had Pestilence, or Plague, and Death. War is coming, and Judith has a bad feeling about their preparations against Famine.
• Early on in the book, two characters discuss the weird phenomenon of trains and planes involved in accidents not being full to capacity, with a consistently higher no-show rate than those vehicles that reach their destinations OK. I'd heard a lot of stories about people who should have been on the trains and bus bombed in London in 2005, and Judith confirmed this: both her sister and her aunt ought to have been on the same train. One was early, the other late!
• Boulder, Colorado, where the good guys eventually settle was a lot emptier than most of the towns the protagonists have passed through. Maybe the inhabitants thought they could escape the plague. But the plague was everywhere by the end. It seems very convenient for our guys, not to have so many bodies to bury. But maybe it is also foreshadowing another disaster approaching. (The very nature of this book tells us another disaster is approaching. But what will be the catalyst?)
• War is coming, and Flagg has the advantage so far, with our heroes spending most of their time travelling and settling into their new city. Flagg has an arsenal of weapons, and, if Bateman is to be believed, most of the technical people. What on earth is Stephen King trying to say here? Computer nerds are evil, or technology is? Is he advocating an ending similar to the finale of the most recent version of Battlestar Galactica? It seems like a very harsh and simplistic judgement!

Location

• I asked if there was any significance to the locations where people have congregated. Neither Judith nor I have been to America, so we can't go from personal experience, but Las Vegas has a rather garish reputation of debauchery (and I'm sure it's lovely in real life. Well...) Also, it's surrounded by desert, so there's nowhere to run.
• Abagail's farm in Nebraska seemed idyllic, all fertile and wholesome and old-fashioned. But it's not big enough for all the people flocking towards them, so they had to find a new place: Boulder, Colorado, a deserted city (as are they all, now, but this one has fewer corpses ruining the aesthetic.) But there does seem to be a sort of exiled-from-paradise theme here, too. 

Politics

• The bit that made Judith the angriest in this section was Bateman's discussion of having to reinstate a political system in the free zone of Boulder. And, of course, it has to be the same old way of doing things as before: a hierarchy, a democracy, sure, but let's make sure that it's the sort of democracy that he and his people want. They'll have Mother Abagail as the nominal head, because she's the one the people have come to find, but really Bateman and his carefully-selected committee will be in charge. Stick to what is tried, tested, and not entirely broken, but for goodness' sake, don't try anything new.
• Although Judith liked Bateman upon first meeting him, now she can't stand him, finding him manipulative and sly.
• Politics, I think, is where the new utopian society will start to come apart.
• But what's the alternative? In Las Vegas, where Randall Flagg is setting up his own domain, it is a democracy, ruled by fear. And Flagg may have called all the dark hearts towards him, but he is ruthless in disposing of anyone who is not "useful" to him.

Dreams

• So, as has already been mentioned, the characters have all been dreaming of Randall Flagg and Mother Abagail. Up to a point, fair enough. But their dreams are starting to shape too much of the plot. They're going to places because of dreams. They're getting valuable information from their dreams. And it's starting to nag at me that this feels like cheating. Sure, if everyone's having the same dreams, they'd say "hmm, that's weird," and "maybe there's something going on here," but it's bothering me how much trust they're putting in them, and it feels like lazy storytelling to me.

Harold

• When Larry arrived at the free zone, he revealed that he'd been following a trail set by Harold Lauder. He had a far higher opinion of Harold than either Frannie or Judith and I did. It set me to wondering who had the more accurate impression of the guy. Larry judged him only by his actions, unprejudiced by Harold's age, personality or appearance. Is he ignorant or wise?
• We discussed last week that Harold felt like a dangerously unhinged "protector" of Frannie. When he described Stu as "that guy," with all his preconceived ideas of the stereotype jock figure, I was thinking, no, Harold is the "that guy" of today's world, the self-described "nice guy" who makes a martyr of himself, whining about being "friendzoned" whenever a girl doesn't fancy him, and feeling all hard-done-by and entitled to another person's affections. Not a nice guy at all. 
• As such, he seemed far too cheerful about Frannie and Stu becoming an item. He took it too well, and, after Fran's reflections after discussing Harold with Larry, you could almost wonder if, after all, Harold was more mature than we'd given him credit for. Then you remember he's spied on them together, stolen Frannie's diary, and generally acted much younger than his age, and it's all thrown into doubt. In the last couple of pages of chapter 50, we see Harold's perspective, and no, it is all an act. 
• I never had a high opinion of Harold, but I was still shocked to see him plotting to actually go to Flagg and betray his fellow-survivors. All because he didn't get the girl. It seems that everyone who goes bad, ends up with Flagg. There's no grey areas. I'm not sure whether I like that or not. I suppose Harold's story shows the mundane sort of evil born of jealousy or selfishness or so on. Not all of the bad guys are the murderers and robbers and rapists. Some start off quite ordinary folk, with a weakness, and where there's a weakness, there's a vulnerability to the dark side.

Conclusion:

So, what's to come? Now we've got all our main good guys together in Boulder, they've got to start building a community once more. There's a meeting been called to discuss leadership, politics and a legal system. Judith is concerned that no one's mentioned farming yet. Canned foods won't last forever, and people need fresh vegetables. They need doctors, surgeons - even appendicitis has proven fatal, now. Frannie'll need a midwife. Meanwhile, we know trouble is coming. War is coming, and they are unprepared. But before Flagg launches his assault on Boulder, in whatever form that will take, I think it will start corroding from within. ("Things fall apart; the centre does not hold.) Nadine is dangerous. Harold is dangerous. Larry is a risk. I think good will prevail, ultimately, but at a great cost, and Randall Flagg will not be utterly destroyed. I rather suspect that there will be yet another great collapse, and that the book will end with the last survivors having to start afresh yet again. Perhaps back at Mother Abagail's farm in Nebraska - but she will not be there. She's a hundred and eight. She will not survive the book.

Book Club: Katie and Judith read Stephen King's The Stand - Book 1.

After finishing reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at the beginning of March, you'd think I'd whizz through a load of the shorter books on my to-read shelf. But instead, I launched almost immediately into one of the biggest novels in any bookshop, Stephen King's epic The Stand. But not alone. This time I'm reading in company, with my best friend Judith (who beat me to the one and only copy in the library, so I had to buy my own. It was free on Waterstone's points, though, so I'm not complaining.) From time to time, Judith and I hold our own two-person book club, and this time I've made enough notes to share with you, you lucky, lucky people.

Spoiler warning: As a multi-part discussion, this will contain a lot more detail than a normal review.

Expectations and Surprises:

• I knew very little about The Stand when I started reading it. All I knew was that it was a post-apocalyptic novel set after a super-flu wipes out most of the world's populations, and that its villain, Randall Flagg, is one of Stephen King's biggest baddies, and that he pops up in several other of King's novels in different guises, and also that there is some crossover with the Dark Tower series, of which I've read the first two books. As such, I won't be surprised if I see him there later on - and am not certain he hasn't already been mentioned.
• I had images in my head of desert wasteland, of lots of people walking, of ravens and crows.
• Judith has read The Stand before, probably at least ten years ago, and she was surprised at how long it took to set the scene; she had forgotten that we see so much of what the world was like before the flu virus, nicknamed "Captain Trips" set in. We get through the length of an ordinary book (about 400 pages) introducing the protagonists in their ordinary or not-so-ordinary lives, going about their business and facing their own challenges, big and little, before the virus breaks in and disrupts everything. I found myself so engrossed in the characters' stories that I'd almost forget about the main plot until King would remind us at the end of a chapter, and show how the virus is spreading from one person, across the country and to the entire world.

The characters

• The designated protagonists are the survivors from each of the different subplots: Stu, one of the first to come into contact with "Captain Trips," Frannie, a college student who has just found out she's expecting a baby, Larry, a rock star with one hit record who has found himself in financial trouble, and Nick, a deaf and mute wanderer who had just found a place for himself, when the flu came to town, leaving him the last survivor. He was our favourite character, a guy who's had a bad lot in life, but who has made the best of things. A thoroughly Good Egg. (Great. He's going to die, isn't he? Probably in some kind of heroic sacrifice to save the world. He's that sort of character.)
• Then there's Lloyd, who is simply repulsive, a criminal who has got mixed up in robbery and murder, and who found himself quite pleased with his new bad-guy image in jail... right up to the point at which he discovers he's facing the death sentence. It's difficult to feel sorry for Lloyd, and yet, once the flu hits and he's left alone in his cell, you wouldn't wish that onto anyone. Then Randall Flagg turns up. "Pleased to meet you!" he says, and I don't think it's a coincidence that I had already jotted down that very line (followed by "hope you've guessed my name") after reading the first couple of pages featuring Flagg. 
• Nick might be my favourite character, and Judith's, but Larry Underwood seems the most complex, with the biggest "journey" ahead of him. He's not a good man, and deep inside, he knows that. He's weak-willed, selfish, often unkind. His own mother described him as a "taker." She loved him dearly, could see there was good inside him - but wished he'd do more to get in touch with that goodness. Already, The Stand is shaping up to have a big Good vs Evil conflict going on, with some characters falling each side of the divide. Larry could go either way. I predict that, ultimately, he'll be on the "good" side, but it'll be a long hard struggle for him.
• Towards the end of book 1, the survivors are just starting to meet up with others, and we've got the beginnings of a new secondary cast. Frannie travels with her late best friend's little brother, Harold Lauder. He's a weird kid, pompous and nerdy, an intelligent teenager, a weird mixture of child and man. But at the end of part one, he shows some worrying, rather creepy tendencies. It's clear he's got a crush on Frannie, who is five years his senior, and feels protective towards her, but that protectiveness shows itself in a worrying, potentially dangerous way, when they meet up with Stu, betraying his feelings as a possessiveness that Judith described as thoroughly repulsive.

Morality:

• When Frannie comes home to tell her parents about her pregnancy, her mother and father show two very different approaches to morality in life. Her mother is very religious, with a rigid moral code - and utterly loveless, a very nasty woman. By contrast, her father is a gentle sort of man, who does not like to contradict his wife, but prefers a peaceful life. He lives his life by logic, science, reason. Yet, when it comes to Frannie's baby, he is surprised that his opinions are driven not by logic, or by generations of rules and laws, but by his emotions. I pondered on what kind of moral code will be of more use when building a new civilisation from scratch.
• Judith's example was of a train heading towards five people on the railway track. If you had the power to flick a switch and save them, but by doing so, kill one person on the siding, would you do that? The logical answer is that one person dying is better than five, that, to quote Spock, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." But, according to a book she'd been reading (she did not name it) that is a psychopath's answer; most people's consciences would feel worse about killing one person by one's actions, even to save five, than to let them die through one's inaction, because they would die anyway. (And I decided that I didn't like either option, and that I'd just shout "GET OFF THE LINE!" because, to use another Wrath of Khan quote, "I don't believe in no-win scenarios.") But as for what sort of moral code will be the foundation of a new civilisation, and its strengths and weaknesses, we'll have to wait and see.

The Collapse of Civilisation

• I chose the wrong time to read The Stand; when a vicious strain of flu and colds was doing its rounds, making me feel quite uneasy. But I also wondered about whether The Stand could be viewed as an allegory, or a warning, of anything else that might cause society to collapse. I looked up the poem that some of the characters discussed, W. B. Yeats' "The Second Coming," which was written after the First World War, or could also refer to the political situation of Ireland at the time. It's full of end-of-the-world imagery, and I felt that it sets the tone for the entire book. In the middle of the 20th century, people feared nuclear war could bring about the end of life as we know it, and I even thought about the UK of the moment, with the government making cuts upon cuts upon cuts, to the health service, to welfare for the disabled, the poor, the young, the old. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. How much more can this go on?
• And Judith has been reading about all the old lost civilisations, where the top ends have grown more and more prosperous, the gulf between rich and poor grown wider and wider, until  -Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
• Bateman, one of the people met along the way, serves as Mr Exposition, predicting a rather pessimistic future of small societies destroying each other. 
• The most horrifying thing about The Stand is that the "Captain Trips" virus was entirely man-made, a biologically-engineered weapon. And the question raised is why? Who would be stupid enough to make something that would practically wipe out the entire world - and make no antidote? Yet it's entirely believable. Always, nations are making bigger and more horrifying weapons that they never expect to use, just to prove to actual and potential enemies that they're not to be messed with. But in this case, all it takes is one person getting out and doing the natural thing of running for it.
• And what is worse: "Rome falls." They've got agents with phials of the germ all over the world. When it's too late for America, the whole world is going down too. I just don't understand that. Is it an attempt to stop anyone asking questions, to preserve the American military's reputation, even though they're too dead to care about the rest of the world's judgement? Horrific.

The Dreams:

• The main characters have all started to have nightmares of Randall Flagg in a high place, most clearly in Nick's dream of being offered his hearing and a voice. It's an obvious biblical reference to Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness. 
• By contrast, Nick has also dreamed of a ripe cornfield in Nebraska, and an old lady known as Mother Abagail. Judith was a bit confused by the cornfield, as she was sure it was supposed to symbolise innocence, nostalgia, simpler times - but, despite living on an Island with lots of farmland, it didn't have any personal associations for her. For me, the fertile farmland was set up as a contrast to the desert: life instead of death, good instead of evil.

In Conclusion:

By the end of book one, only a couple of the many characters introduced so far have met up, and they are all wandering fairly aimlessly. Nick is heading for Nebraska, Fran, Harold and Stu heading for Vermont, and I think Larry's in the same state, but has not met up with the rest. They are coming closer, but still in small clusters of people, nowhere near forming a society. I'd had the idea that The Stand would form one community, or maybe two (one good, one evil) but if so, it's still a good way into the future. Maybe, instead, it's an epic along the lines of Game of Thrones with the characters scattered all across the continent. I kind of wish I'd got a map where I could mark out all the characters' journeys, and where they are in relation to each other. 400-odd pages in, and we're at the point where I'd imagined the book to begin! Not that I mind; what I like best about Stephen King's good works is that he does take time just getting to know the characters, setting them up and drawing you in, making you care before throwing everything he's got at them. 

If you've read The Stand you're very welcome to add any thoughts to the comments below. I'll be posting our thoughts on the first half of Book 2 on Friday.

Fringe: Season Five

This review is very long overdue, so here are the links to the story so far:

Season One
Season Two
Season Three
Season Four

Warning: here be spoilers.

Season 4 of Fringe almost ended on the perfect note for a series finale, with the world saved, Olivia brought back to life, and the Bishop family tighter than ever, with a baby on the way. Happily ever after… but for the glimpse we had in a late episode of a very bad future indeed. It is this future we are plunged into from the start of season five, following straight on from that oddball future-episode, and the backstory unfolds gradually. We learn that Peter and Olivia married and had a baby daughter, called Henrietta, or Etta. But when Etta was only a few years old, the Observers came from the future, and at some point in the chaos, Etta went missing. Not long after this, the main team of the Fringe series: Walter and Peter Bishop, Olivia Dunham and Astrid Farnsworth, have been frozen in Amber for twenty years, allowing their story to carry on as if no time has passed, but in a terrifyingly changed world around them.

Once again, I had to applaud Anna Torv’s portrayal of Olivia. Although only a few years have passed in-universe, and she does not appear to have been aged-up, she plays a much older, sadder, wiser version of the character, one who has loved and lost and had her heart broken. The scene in which she is reunited with Etta and shows simultaneous joy to see her daughter again, and horror that she has missed twenty years of her growing up, are utterly heartbreaking. Similarly, Peter is no longer the carefree man-boy of the early seasons, but a responsible adult. Their relationship is strained to breaking-point by the loss of their daughter, the guilt and the relentless search.

The format of Fringe has evolved far away from its original weirdness-of-the-week episodes, and now that our heroes are fugitives, wanted by the Observers, there are no more official investigations into “fringe” events. Now this is war, a dirty war, and Walter and the team are driven to desperate measures in order to survive. This is not their world any more, but Etta’s, and they must play by Etta’s rules.

The first few episodes did not feel like the old Fringe again – although it’s difficult to say which version was the definitive Fringe, as it has changed so many times over the five seasons. And then, a shocking event happens, and just a few episodes after her introduction, Etta was killed. This seemed very unsatisfying, rushed, perhaps because of season 5’s shorter length, and Peter and Olivia deserved better. It felt as though Etta existed only to establish a personal link between the 2010s Fringe team and the dark 2030s world, and afterwards she had no place, so the writers gave her a heroic sacrifice, taking a few Observers with her.

That being said, I’m sorry to say it, but I think after Etta’s death, Fringe returned to its former quality, with the original team dynamics, although those regular characters who took the slow path to the future – Colonel Broyles and Nina Sharp – were relegated to playing multiple characters. The female characters take more of a back seat in the later episodes of this final season. The attention shifts more onto Peter for a significant fascinating (but rather too quickly solved) plotline, instead of former protagonist Olivia, and poor beloved Astrid is almost forgotten. Season four saw the closure of the bridge between worlds, and this shorter season just focuses on the original universe, original cast, but of course we get one more hop across the divide for the finale, getting to see how the second world has fared in the missing twenty one years.

Fringe is a demanding show for its actors, each playing many different versions of the same character. John Noble takes this to an extreme when Walter starts being recognisable as two different versions in the same man, as he struggles not to return to the same cold, ruthless scientist who got them into the mess in the first place, while trying to decipher his own, forgotten, coded messages (recorded on Betamax tapes and frozen in the amber).  By the time the plan is revealed, it did not come as a surprise that, despite the amount of time set in this bad future, there is once more a reset button, and that the future can be rewritten. Again, this is one possible future of many. For once, this trope did not feel like too much of a cop-out.

This season was all about parental love and sacrifice, and much as I longed for an easier happy ending, it was always going to be Walter’s sacrifice that saved the world, as he was ultimately responsible for nearly everything in the series (although, unless I missed something, he had nothing to do with the Observers’ invasion.)


Fringe has morphed and evolved significantly since I started watching it as a weird X-Files type show with science even I could see was nonsense. I’ve come a long way with its characters. It is a show that will stick with me a long time, one that I am very glad to have invested in the box sets, although it would be impossible to go straight back to the start after finishing the series, as it’s become almost unrecognisable. I did not expect to love it as much as I did.

Fringe: Season 4

Spoilers, of course. It would be impossible to discuss this show without them.

Season three of Fringe ended with a nice note of happily-ever-after. The two universes were brought together to create a new world and prevent all-out apocalypse. But then - Peter Bishop, who brought about the unification, popped out of existence. Oops.

The credits sequences of Fringe in season three were colour-coded in order to quickly establish which universe each episode would take place in: blue-green for the original world, and red for the alternative universe. Season four's credits were coloured in yellow. Or amber, if you prefer... ominous in itself when you consider that amber is used in the second universe as a preservative to prevent any holes in the world from growing and spreading. And this new season's setting and characters are different. Despite the lack of Peter, there has still been a "bridge" built between the universes, and the two Fringe teams are working together to repair the damage rather than to destroy each other. But the characters are subtly altered. Our Olivia is harder, having killed her abusive stepfather without Peter there to save her as a child. She was brought up by Massive Dynamic's Nina Sharp, and wears pale pink lipstick. Her redheaded counterpart from the other universe is no longer a mother (has never been a mother - Peter never existed and so neither did their son Henry.) Walter is more broken, and never leaves his lab in the Harvard basement. Other characters are still alive who should have been dead, and vice-versa. It would be interesting to watch the entire first three seasons through and pay attention to every event influenced by Peter in one way or another.

Despite what the observers (the creepy pale bald men who keep showing up whenever anything big is about to happen, and who know too much) have said, it is not that Peter never existed, but that both versions of him really did die as a child. Except, whoops, he doesn't seem to have got the memo, and materialises in the river to find himself in a terrifying It's A Wonderful Life world where no one knows him. His memories are intact, but the world around him is not quite the same - everything and everyone that had been impacted by coming into contact with Peter now is as if he had never been there. The big question is: is this yet another alternative universe, or an altered version of his own world? Can he go home, or is he there already, finding it changed out of recognition?

In this version of reality, poor Olivia is suffering from dreadful migraines - which turn out to have been induced by mysterious figures breaking into her house and secretly dosing her with Cortexifan, the mind-enhancing drug developed by William Bell and Walter Bishop to give her psychic powers. And then we discover that Massive Dynamic's Nina Sharp - in this version, her own foster-mother - is behind it all. As a migraine-sufferer, I hated her for this. Clearly Nina is up to something nefarious - but never mind that; inflicting migraines on a person is pure evil.

But as it happens, it is the other Nina Sharp behind the migraines - the one from the other universe and it turns out she is working for someone else: David Robert Jones, the Big Bad of season one. We last saw him gruesomely killed by being trapped in a door between universes - but in the Peterless universe, Jones survived and is as magnificently evil as ever. His purposes are not made clear, but they are full of havoc and destruction, the end of the world.

Episode nineteen takes a break from the main season's plotline and flashes forward to a very bad future. It begins with scrolling text: "They came from the future." The title credit sequence, traditionally covered in words of science just outside possibility, is changed to include words such as "Joy" "Individuality" "Community." I wibbled and screamed a bit watching this new sequence. If the future Peter had witnessed from the doomsday machine at the end of season three was grim, it is nothing compared with this future. The observers are revealed to have come from a future Earth - perhaps a later stage of human evolution - and we already knew that they can see all points in time, all the different things that might happen. But now it seems they are not just disinterested observers, dispassionately committed to ensuring that events take their rightful course. Now we see another side to them - time travellers from an uninhabitable future earth, who come to 2036 and enslave humanity.

We are introduced to a new team of resistance fighters, and find Walter, Peter and Astrid (who I have unjustly neglected in my reviews. She is a brilliant scientist, a valuable member of the Fringe team, and just lovely) frozen a la Han Solo in amber. Olivia is nowhere to be seen, which is ominous. Earlier in the season (in her own time) she was warned by an Observer that there is no version of the future in which she will not die. Well... surely that goes without saying of anyone? But Olivia has taken his message to heart, and expects this death to be imminent. One young woman from the future resistence (Etta) at one point claims Walter as her grandfather, which set my mind going. If she's, say, 24, she could have been born not long after the current season takes place. Her name - Etta - short for Henrietta - and what was the other Olivia's short-lived son's name, again? Yes, she really is Peter and Olivia's daughter, Walter's granddaughter. Which means that Olivia has a little longer to live, anyway.

Episode twenty takes us right back to the present day, as if we had not seen the future, and we meet the real - real - Big Bad. Now, I'd accidentally been spoiled on this by reading the box blurb. I had thought before that we had not finished the William Bell story. His attempt at immortality in season three had gone nowhere. But after all the shenanigans involved in getting the character into season three without showing Leonard Nimoy - Anna Torv's uncanny impersonation, the animated episode - I had not expected to actually see him in the role again. But it seems that he just cannot stay in retirement. I'd never been quite sure where to place Dr Bell on the scale of good and evil. Certainly his methods were morally dubious, but he was pretty likeable in person. But in this altered universe in which Peter died young, Dr Bell had heard his science partner's rage against the universe and decided to do something about it: to destroy the world and create a new one for just him and Walter, a universe with no place for the human race.

Of course, the season finale ends with the Fringe team saving the day again, but not without great cost. Bell needed Olivia's psychic powers to bring about his new universe, so Walter shoots not his old friend, but Olivia herself. (It's all right - she gets better.) Apocalypse is averted once more, Olivia is expecting a baby, so Peter, Olivia and Walter can look forward to a bright new future...

Future, you say? Remember episode nineteen...

Best episodes: 

2. One Night In October: The Fringe team recruit the other-world counterpart of a serial killer to help solve their case.
6. And Those We've Left Behind: Time loops can be traced back to a husband's desperation to keep hold of his wife.
10. Forced Perspective: A teenage girl has the power to predict death.
11. Making Angels: A beautiful episode bringing together the Astrids of both worlds.
14. The End of All Things: Olivia is held captive. David Robert Jones wants her powers.
18. The Consultant: Events in one universe have effects on the other.
19. Letters of Transit: The terrifying future, in which the Observers have enslaved mankind.
20. Worlds Apart: After spending a season working together, the two Fringe teams must say goodbye and close the door between their worlds.
21 and 22: Brave New World: In which we discover a bigger, badder Big Bad planning a bigger, badder apocalypse than ever before.

Just one more season to go now, and it's a short one - only 13 episodes compared with the other seasons' 22. I'm expecting this final season to take place mostly or entirely in the bad future of episode 19, which is a chilling thought. I wonder if it might not have been better to finish the series here - but then that would leave season 19 as an unfinished plotline. Besides, I thought that last season and look how season 4 turned out!

The Girl with all the Gifts - M. R. Carey

Melanie is a very unusual child. The only home she's ever known is a military base, where she is taken to her classrooms each day strapped into a wheelchair, and returned to her cell each evening. She is bright and inquisitive, but little does she know that she is being brought up for a particular purpose.

It is clear from the very start that The Girl With All The Gifts is not set in the world we know; though recognisable with mentions of London and other towns, unfamiliar names such as Beacon and Region 6 place it into a dystopia setting before we see outside Melanie's daily routine. It is implied that Melanie and her classmates may not be exactly human, and they are feared by the adults around them, but the novel is slow to reveal exactly what has happened to the world and its people. (Unfortunately, the review blurbs on the cover give a little too much away with their comparisons to other series.) The first act was my favourite part of the story, with its small pieces of information hidden in Melanie's everyday life asking more questions with each one answered.

But this new version of normality does not last long. Disaster strikes, and the second act shows a small group of survivors on the run in a post-apocalyptic England: Sergeant Parks and Private Kieran Gallagher, Dr Caroline Caldwell, a research scientist, and Miss Helen Justineau, former teacher to the strange children. And of course, at the group's heart, feared by some, the hope of others, is Melanie.

The two women, Miss Justineau and Dr Caldwell are portrayed in sharp contrast with each other. Miss Justineau is kind-hearted and idealistic, while Dr Caldwell's approach is cold. Her task is important for the human race's survival, and she is prepared to take any action for the greater good, no matter how morally repugnant. At first, when seen through the infatuated Melanie's eyes, Miss Justineau is the heroine, while Dr Caldwell fills the role of villain, but The Girl with all the Gifts does not show a clear black-and-white morality. Miss Justineau is certainly more sympathetic throughout, yet when the fate of humanity is at stake, I came to understand, if not approve, Dr Caldwell's approach as well. Her research gives the familiar narrative a scientific twist, making this book stand out from the rest of the genre.

Greek mythology recurs throughout the novel, in particular, Melanie's favourite tale about Pandora's Box. "The girl with all the gifts" is a direct translation of Pandora's name, and its relevance is revealed in a shocking plot twist at the end which left me completely taken aback, stunned and perhaps even feeling a little betrayed, but I quickly realised it was the perfect ending for this story.

Film - The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

When I watched the first Hunger Games movie, although I enjoyed it, my enjoyment was marred by having just reread the book, and knowing exactly what was going to happen and in what order. This time, I resisted temptation and went into Catching Fire with a knowledge of the book, but with enough distance between me and the book that I was able to watch the film as its own thing. Coming back into the world of Panem without having prepared myself, I was expecting to feel a certain level of detachment from the story, but I was surprised to find myself crying very early on, when Katniss and Peeta visited District 11 on their Victory Tour.

I wasn't quite convinced by Donald Sutherland as President Snow during the first film, possibly because he was so different from how I had pictured the character. By Catching Fire, however, he took the part and made it his own; once he has seen Katniss as a threat, he is no longer that outwardly charming, grandfatherly figure, but subtly menacing. "Their love will inspire us and will continue to do so every day for the rest of their lives..." brrr! You can hear the threat behind these words, and they are chilling indeed.

I still felt that the love triangle was incongruous, but this time I thought it was a deliberate choice, highlighting to the viewer that the emphasis on romance is supposed to be a distraction from what's really going on. In conversation, it became very clear that though Peeta is infatuated with Katniss, he really doesn't know her at all. As a result, I'm afraid I found his argument that without Katniss he'd have nothing to live for somewhat pathetic and unbelievable. Johanna's defiance, ("What can they do to me? There's no one left that I love!") was entirely convincing. I don't know if that's a comment on the actors or the characters - probably a mixture of both. Johanna was my favourite newcomer in the book of Catching Fire, and Jena Malone brought her to life perfectly; a tough, angry young woman who is yet pitiable and entertaining despite having been hardened by her experiences.

Catching Fire was notable for the hope amidst the horror. No matter how brutal the Capitol becomes in trying to stamp out every last spark of rebellion, the small acts of heroism and sacrifice shine out the brighter when all is bleak. Cinna, Beetee, Mags show a quiet strength that is extremely powerful when the world seems to be conspiring to dehumanise them all. Cinna's uncertain fate is devastating. Because I knew it was coming, I felt the dread in every scene he appeared in, and even being prepared did not protect me from the horror as he is dragged away just as Katniss is sent straight into a battle for her life while overwhelmed and disorientated by shock and grief.

Effie Trinket also grows as a character since her first appearance, having finally got to know her tributes - her victors - as people after years of seeing them as mere walking dead. Her false jollity in the farcical reaping ceremony is heartbreaking and grotesque. Beneath her daft ways there is a genuine affection, and perhaps even a small complicity in the rebellion. My friends and I discussed afterwards whether Effie and her Capitol cronies were just as much prisoners of the system as the residents of the twelve districts, how much of their superficiality was an act born of fear.

After the demise of suave Seneca Crane and his marvellous beard, there is a new head gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee. In stark contrast to Crane, Plutarch comes across as rather sleazy. Having read the book, it's difficult to say whether or not it was obvious that he was secretly conspiring against the government. It seemed obvious to me, but that is probably because I knew how to read his dialogue and motivations. However, he is not what one might picture as a revolutionary, being rather stodgy and unglamorous.

The Hunger Games themselves were the least interesting part of the film for me, probably because I was just waiting for the characters to figure out what I already knew, the nature of the arena, but there was a lot to think about nonetheless. This time, there was more than just action and violence; there was teamwork and characters actually trying to keep each other alive. I was struck by the weirdness of the characters working as allies when the time would come when they must turn on each other. (Of course, the plot has other ideas.) In these Hunger Games, however, personal survival comes secondary to protest, each act of teamwork, sacrifice and life-saving an act of defiance before the final, dramatic confrontation.

Divergent - Veronica Roth

In the last year or so, I've read a lot of rave reviews of Veronica Roth's teen dystopian novel Divergent, so when I found a copy in Ellie's book shop, I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about. In the wake of The Hunger Games, the YA market is full of dystopian futures: zombie apocalypses, corrupt governments and teenagers versus the world. Despite, or perhaps because of the hype, I was not convinced that Divergent would stand apart from the rest, but I wanted to be proved wrong.

The society of Divergent is split into five factions, each of which value and strive for a single character trait: Dauntless (courage), Abnegation (selflessness), Amity (kindness), Erudite (knowledge) and Candor (truth). I was very much reminded of Hogwarts houses, but turned up to eleven, and for life. Members of each faction have their own roles and contributions in this society, according to these values - but this view of humanity seemed too simplistic to convince me. People are complicated, and I could not believe in a world which dictated that a person can be either brave, or kind, or intellectual, that one quality must drive a person's every action, every thought, every decision, from the age of sixteen to the end of their days, or be outcast forever.

It took me a long time to get into Divergent, but my favourite segment of the novel was the middle, in which heroine Tris (Beatrice) trains for the initiation into the Dauntless faction. I was reminded of a school story, with new friendships and enemies made, learning and living together in dormitories, and facing up to bullies among other initiates and teachers alike. The famous knife scene was where my interest really started, which Tris shows real-world courage, as opposed to the daring stunts and tough fighting that passed for bravery in the Dauntless faction.

Fans of Divergent grow very tired of the inevitable comparisons with The Hunger Games, and between tough-girl Tris and Katniss Everdeen, and indeed they are very different stories within the genre. However, Divergent did not stand out from the other dystopian teen books. I enjoyed the Dauntless scenes fairly well, as a small group of characters getting to know each other and the workings of their new faction away from the hinted-at disturbances in their world's government. (How much of the world is factioned, and what happened to the rest of it?) However, I thought that the wider world, though full of potential, was quite weakly realised and unconvincing, and the final act was nothing exceptional. Sixteen-year-old heroine and a few friends-and-relations trying to bring down a corrupt regime? It's been done before, and better.

Watchmen - Alan Moore

Picture a world where superheroes are real. Really picture it. Pretty cool, huh? Now really think about it. A world where anyone can put on a costume, fight crime with complete anonymity, take the law into their own hands. Where these costumed heroes - for they don't have any superhuman powers - play judge, jury and executioner all at once. Where groups of masked vigilantes are the terror of the underworld. What sort of people would choose that lifestyle, and should they be trusted with the responsibility?

These are just some of the questions posed by Alan Moore in his masterpiece, Watchmen. The title, of course, is a reference to the age-old question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen? - Juvenal, Satires) Interspersed between the chapters of the graphic novel are pages supposedly from historical documents, charting the rise and fall of the superhero. The world is not quite the world as we know it, and it is indicated that superheroes had a lot to do with altering the course of history - and not for the better. In the 1985 of Watchmen, America has won the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon is still President, and the world is on the brink of nuclear war.

Superheroes are now outlawed, having arguably done more harm than good. They came into being after the comic books soared in popularity, but the reality was something quite different, and now the costumed heroes have disappeared from the public eye - both from the streets and from the comics. But one remains, if one can call him a hero by any stretch of the definition. Rorschach: bitter, repellent and hate-filled, but driven by his unswerving moral absolutism and crusade against the murkiest specimens of humanity, fighting them on their own terms. The story opens after the death of a former masked crusader, with Rorschach warning his old comrades of his suspicions: that a serial killer is targeting them one by one.

Watchmen is an incredibly dark novel, the two characters with the strongest voices having contrasting but equally bleak views of the world. Rorschach is bitter, violent and horrifying, not at all a likable character, and yet almost sympathetic. His journal entries form part of the narrative, giving a fascinating but unsettling insight into his mind. On the other hand, Dr Manhattan, the only "hero" with superpowers, has a gods-eye view of history, with past, present and future equally visible. He has also all but detached himself from the human race to whom he used to belong. It seems that Manhattan's extra knowledge of Earth has caused him to give up on the planet and those who inhabit it. The two anti-heroes provide a sobering commentary on humanity, all the more so when coupled with the impossible moral dilemma posed in the final chapter of the book. But there are other, quieter voices in the to balance these two harbingers of doom, suggesting that all is not completely hopeless.

Despite the reputation of comic books as a genre, Watchmen is not an easy read, but it is worth taking time over. You benefit from reading the pictures as well as the words, and some mysteries can be figured out before their revelation, if you pay attention to detail. Watchmen is also an excellent deconstruction of the superhero genre. I did not find any of the characters particularly likable - as well as the anti-heroic Rorschach and emotionally disconnected Dr Manhattan, I found the more conventional heroes a bit insipid - and yet the storytelling and world-building kept me hooked. An exemplary work of literature, and one which I suspect will get better with every subsequent reread. I borrowed this from the library, but would consider buying my own copy.

There has also been a movie, which I found to be very faithful to the original work; although it differs significantly in one particular instance, I felt that this was more of a detail rather than a change to the plot or the spirit of the story.

Book and Film: V for Vendetta

Remember, Remember, the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

V for Vendetta is a rare example of a story that I encountered the film adaptation before the original book. I watched the movie last November 5th, texting my sister in London who was watching it at the same time. It is a tale of oppression and anarchy, set in a dystopian England comparable with that of Nineteen Eighty Four. (I wish I'd read V for Vendetta in sixth form, to compare with the Orwell, though I have my doubts about whether a graphic novel would have been considered an acceptable literary work.) Both film and book focus on a young girl called Evey, whose life is saved one night by a masked figure called V, revealed to be a terrorist intent upon bringing down the fascist government and establishing a state of anarchy.

Though I greatly enjoyed the film, it did not escape my criticism. The setting was shown to be a twisted, nightmare version of England, both familiar and unfamiliar, but though the film shows hints, I felt that it was not made clear how the world came to this, or even quite what "this" was. The book clarifies this, showing how the England of V for Vendetta is built up from the ashes of a nuclear war that has wiped out most of the world, and while the population was still struggling to its feet amid the chaos, the Fascist group Norsefire marched in and took control. This England is a cheerless place, devoid of art, music, culture, or anything that does not further the government's totalitarian regime. The government is depicted as an all-powerful being, its departments named after different body parts: the Nose (police force), the Eye and the Ear (surveillance), the Mouth (propaganda broadcasts) and so forth.

The key to understanding the world of V for Vendetta lies in context. When I watched the film, viewing it as a work of the mid-2000s, I found it fascinating but could not identify this nation with my Britain. I hope my American readers won't take this the wrong way, but the movie felt like an American dystopia with an English setting, rather than a home-grown English story (though Alan Moore is in fact English.) Some elements of Norsefire's England struck a chord, while others felt alien. I couldn't see the progression of my country from a relatively liberal, increasingly secular, live-and-let-live nation, to a Fascist state, a place of persecution where it is dangerous enough to be white, heterosexual, meek and law-abiding - and a death sentence to be anything else. (But then, who could have seen in the 1920s and early '30s what would happen in Europe a few years later?)

Reading the novel in the wake of Margaret Thatcher's death, it all clicked into place. Suddenly the media was full of memories of Thatcher's policies and Britain's political situation in the 1980s, and I understood how Moore saw his present and projected a possible future. It's strange how much my country has changed during my lifetime, even looking back to my teenage years. Is it a better place now, or worse? Certainly I'd rather live here in this reality, even with its innumerable problems, than in the V for Vendetta version.

Against the oppressive gloom of this England, V's personal universe is refreshing, rich in the collected culture that has vanished from the world above. His "Shadow Gallery" is packed with books, paintings, records - treasures that have no place in the utilitarian world after the nuclear apocalypse. V is well-spoken, well-read, musically gifted as well as a criminal genius and deadly fighter. His cultural references range from Shakespeare to the Rolling Stones to Enid Blyton. One can't help rooting for him, if somewhat uncomfortably, considering that he is indisputably a terrorist. But if he's the bad guy, his enemies are no better, and they lack V's charm and appeal. Hugo Weaving, in the film, plays the part to perfection, capturing the character's charisma and intelligence, his almost superhuman strength, but also giving V a touch more humanity and pathos than in the comic - quite an achievement when the actor's face is hidden beneath a smirking Guy Fawkes mask the entire time.

Evey's character, however, didn't make sense to me until I read the book. Natalie Portman's Evey is a different person: older, smarter, stronger-minded; but sometimes she has to behave like the naive teenager of the book in order to keep the plot on track. As such, the character doesn't always quite ring true, and I found myself rather confused. I didn't believe in her first scenes as a desperate first-time prostitute trying to scrape enough money to survive - instead, I felt that she had an ulterior motive for being out on the streets after curfew, but this was never satisfactorily resolved. And even if V did save her life, I felt that her gratitude would not be enough for her to throw in her lot with him, help him escape arrest after committing acts of terrorism, live in his "shadow gallery" as a barely protesting prisoner, and then fall in love with him. These decisions fitted the younger, more innocent character of the novel, but not the strong-minded young woman of the film. (And I'm still not sure where her loyalties lie in the scene with the priest - who is she double-crossing there?)

But quibbles aside, the film complements the graphic novel, taking different detours from the main story of Evey and V, and focusing on different supporting characters. As is often the case, there is a lot more room for details, subplots and minor characters in the book than in the film, but in its turn, I missed some scenes and characters that were unique to the film. Stephen Fry's Gordon, for example, is a completely different (very Stephen Fryish) character than the Gordon of the book.

The graphic novel's artwork is incredible, in some places more cinematic than the film itself. I would be interested to see a closer film adaptation of the book - but even that would never live up to the movie in my mind. But film as a medium can do things that even the best of books can't - such as the exhilarating musical accompaniment to the destruction of the Old Bailey at the beginning of the film. The movie ends with an emotional (as well as literal) explosion, heartbreaking and uplifting and strangely cathartic.