Just out from Max "World War Z" Brooks, moving on from zombies, now the monster of choice is bigfoot. Or more precisely, a whole troop of the things, that move in on a tiny eco-village in the wake of a larger natural disaster.
The structure of the book is quite different than the episodic nature of Brooks' earlier WWZ. It's mostly one woman's diary written at the behest of her psychologist, along with scattered interviews with the head of the recovery crew, and a couple of NPR interviews thrown in. It paints a complete picture, but it has to develop slowly, introducing the characters – mostly very annoying people – as they come into view. The bigfoot encounters don't begin until maybe a third of the way into the book. That's quite a way in, but the entire book is pretty short. If it sounds like a snoozer, this is anything but. The action ramps up to a crashing ending that is equally satisfying and horrifying. What began as a forgettable story of a group of techno-narcissists whining in the woods ultimately twists into a parable on ethnic cleansing. It is that metamorphosis that makes this book far more than just another monster story.ps: Quentin Tarantino should make the movie adaptation.
pps: After writing the above, I had to sit back down and re-read the last two chapters and the epilogue. It's that kind of book, and they were even better the second time through.
No comments:
Post a Comment