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Flora & Jim
The world is frozen. The animals in the ascendant. And, locked in desperate pursuit of "the other father" across a grim icy apocalypse, Jim will do anything to keep his daughter alive.
Audible Audio
Published June 24, 2022
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23 people want to read
About the author
B.P. Gregory
32 books87 followersBP Gregory has been an archaeology student and a dilettante of biology, psychology, and apocalypse prepping. She is the author of five novels including the recently released Flora & Jim, about a father who’ll do anything to keep his daughter alive in a frozen wasteland.
BP Gregory lives in Melbourne with her husband and is currently working on The Newru Trail, a murder-mystery set in a world where houses eat your memories. For stories, reviews and recommendations as she ploughs through her to-read pile visit bpgregory.com.
BP Gregory lives in Melbourne with her husband and is currently working on The Newru Trail, a murder-mystery set in a world where houses eat your memories. For stories, reviews and recommendations as she ploughs through her to-read pile visit bpgregory.com.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 28, 2019
** Edited as review is now live on Kendall Reviews! **
“I wanted to smash fear’s spine with my boot.”
If you’ve spent any amount of time reading through any of my reviews or even seeing my tweets on Twitter about what books I’ve snagged, you’ll frequently see me say that I like to buy, read and review books from the folks who interact with me a bunch and who have supported me through likes, shares/retweets, buying my books or just being supportive. It doesn’t create any sort of preconceived bias going into reading, I just know how tough it can be to get your book seen when so many great books keep coming out.
Flora & Jim is one such book that I needed to snag. BP has always been fantastic and very engaging on the various platforms and when I saw the synopsis to this one I was hooked. While I am typically a bit jaded or uninterested about a lot of post-apocalyptic stories, one such plot point I’ll never lose interest in is the ‘earth is now frozen’ narrative.
I was intrigued between the tension-filled relationship between Flora & Jim and it worked well that the story starts off by us being thrown into the middle of the action. The world is ice now, completely frozen over and society as we know it has disintegrated.
Gregory picks up with the father/daughter duo in pursuit of a man and boy. They want their supplies and in the new world the pecking order has returned to survival of the fittest.
I felt this rolled out similar to McCarthy’s “The Road.” The father here was fighting an internal battle between what he’d done in the past versus what needs to be done to survive.
Gregory decides to add an entire mix of creepy-crawlies into the mix as well, which was absolutely unsettling. Whenever the two get a fire going, they, and we the readers, have no idea what will be defrosted and come alive, squirming forth from the permafrost.
The ending was the icing on the cake (had to say it!) and I thought was a great wrap up to the tale.
I’ll definitely be checking out more from Gregory, but if you are looking for a starting point, I think this would be an ideal spot.
“I wanted to smash fear’s spine with my boot.”
If you’ve spent any amount of time reading through any of my reviews or even seeing my tweets on Twitter about what books I’ve snagged, you’ll frequently see me say that I like to buy, read and review books from the folks who interact with me a bunch and who have supported me through likes, shares/retweets, buying my books or just being supportive. It doesn’t create any sort of preconceived bias going into reading, I just know how tough it can be to get your book seen when so many great books keep coming out.
Flora & Jim is one such book that I needed to snag. BP has always been fantastic and very engaging on the various platforms and when I saw the synopsis to this one I was hooked. While I am typically a bit jaded or uninterested about a lot of post-apocalyptic stories, one such plot point I’ll never lose interest in is the ‘earth is now frozen’ narrative.
I was intrigued between the tension-filled relationship between Flora & Jim and it worked well that the story starts off by us being thrown into the middle of the action. The world is ice now, completely frozen over and society as we know it has disintegrated.
Gregory picks up with the father/daughter duo in pursuit of a man and boy. They want their supplies and in the new world the pecking order has returned to survival of the fittest.
I felt this rolled out similar to McCarthy’s “The Road.” The father here was fighting an internal battle between what he’d done in the past versus what needs to be done to survive.
Gregory decides to add an entire mix of creepy-crawlies into the mix as well, which was absolutely unsettling. Whenever the two get a fire going, they, and we the readers, have no idea what will be defrosted and come alive, squirming forth from the permafrost.
The ending was the icing on the cake (had to say it!) and I thought was a great wrap up to the tale.
I’ll definitely be checking out more from Gregory, but if you are looking for a starting point, I think this would be an ideal spot.
November 14, 2018
NB - some spoilers but review won't give away the ending.
In short, this book is brilliant. Go out and buy it now. But if you want to know more, then read on.
I enjoyed the last of Ms. Gregory’s books, ‘The Town’ and was eager to see where she would go with a story so innocuously titled as ‘Flora and Jim.’
The setting is a frozen, post-apocalyptic landscape similar to that found in the film, Extinction (2015.) There are also similar father-daughter relationship parallels. The other recent story I thought about in this respect was Netflix’s ‘Cargo’ albeit with a much different storyline (no zombies!)
I read the print version and was immediately intrigued by the little pictures at the top of each chapter consisting of numbered pieces of foil – perhaps sweet wrappers? I’m still puzzled by the non-sequential numbers printed on them, and I assume this is not a formatting mistake. Maybe the author wants us to scratch away at our heads long after we’ve finished the book?
The story features two fathers, the first being Jim. The other is called Alfred or ‘the other father’. Jim and Flora are chasing him. Oh, and Alfred has a son with him called ‘Fauna.’ So – Flora and Fauna., or flowers and animals. Are they related somehow? We never quite get to know, we simply understand that there is this all-consuming pursuit. It is revealed that Jim has retrieved Flora from Alfred’s company when Flora trails behind this escaping ‘other father’ and suffers a fit.
I identified with the description of Flora’s seizure as I have personal experience of this with my own father: the notion of the sky falling on the head, a traffic cone smell. Again, this all adds to the authenticity.
This ‘relentless pursuit’ aspect had a feel of Roland Deschaine’s quest chasing the Man in Black (Stephen King’s ‘Dark Tower’ if you’re not familiar.) It’s all-consuming, and we see how Jim’s obsession is gradually eclipsed by that of Flora.
The child-father language during the course of the story is endearing. The author induces an understanding of the pains of fatherhood when he describes ‘… the anxiety that squeezed my chest ever since Flora’s arrival in the world.’ Or his constant fear of ‘how casually her tissue-paper existence might tear, by slip or inattention.’
We rapidly pick up how strange the future existence in this world must be compared to our own. It’s done on a drip-feed basis and I like how the author deftly avoids ‘info-dump.’ Here are just a few examples:
— Flora can’t remember the things that were a norm for children before the catastrophe. Abandoned play equipment in a residential area is left alone because she doesn’t understand the concept of apparatus designed for children to enjoy. Such is this miserable existence.
— The routine is paramount. Frozen days are spent searching for a new place to shelter from the unliveable night. And you don’t go out at night — it’s too cold. One of Jim’s previous ‘family’ did and barely survived. (Part of him didn’t — ‘The night took up residence behind his face.’)
— If all the plants are gone, what is producing the oxygen? Later, Jim wonders this when he and Flora encounter a container park at a dock. He speculates whether the sea itself, the ‘cradle of living things’, could still harbour photosynthesising plants (seaweed, algae.) But all he sees is extinction. The speculation goes only partway to explaining the ‘science’ of this emerging new world. Another question is, how far in the future is this, that animals could have evolved so quickly into the fantastical beasts we encounter later in the book.
— The nature of the new fauna is wonderfully described in its full horror when Flora and Jim encounter a ‘tornado’ of migrating beasts on the ice surface of a bay. ‘… so terrifying it was funny; snapped that little cut-off switch (in their brains) for ‘too much’ right off.’
— Jim is well versed in survival craft. This is evidenced when a predator is known to be tracking them. It takes some well-used blankets and drapes to cover their tracks through the snow. Jim then backtracks carefully by putting his feet in his previous footprints then sprints off in another direction.
So, a strange world indeed. But well pencilled-out.
The aforementioned family forms a basis for flashbacks in Jim’s narrative. It appears to consist of a large group of aunts and uncles. The story spends time with each of these minor characters, describing each one as a person coping with the catastrophe that has occurred in their own way. This is artfully done in the space of a few sentences, and highlights another strength of the story — it is ultimately about people.
We learn about Jim’s eventual partner, Mai. How she was brought to the family by scouts in a grief stricken state. At this point, we don’t know what has become of her original family but we are given to understand that maybe she has been kidnapped by Jim’s. We learn that Jim’s ‘family’ weren’t his natural family and that he eventually escapes from them with Mai.
Another major strength of this book is the superb descriptions (particularly about how wretched the living is in this world) abound. Here’s just a few of my favourites:
‘ … beard like spider’s legs appearing from a cave.’
‘ … it was like the lavish table of our ancestors was being devoured by ghosts in front of our eyes’ (referring to the culling of humans when the earth’s temperature dropped.)
‘My stomach a miserable shrivelled thing suckling on my spine.’ (Hunger is a constant companion in this world.)
There are more poetic phrases, such as, ‘the whole broken tooth structure ringing with hymns to a lost summer (summing up the appearance of the frozen landscape.)
The author has laboured over these sentences, word by word, carefully crafting them to place the reader in a desolate scene, and feel for these two vulnerable but strong characters.
As with books like Cormac McArthy’s ‘The Road’, you wonder what motivates these survivors to go on living. Life is just another day in which you don’t kill yourself. Or, in Flora and Jim’s words, ‘Life clings on in pockets and corners.’ Then again, we are reminded of the fleeing ‘other father.’
In caring for Flora Jim is constantly staving off depression: ‘Despite all my efforts, depression was a page stuck to my forehead.’
As the story unfolds, we see in Jim’s former partner, Mai, someone he dreads or at least wants to leave behind. Why?
Later, we learn why Mai and Jim had to leave the family – spoiler: they wanted a baby, and the family doesn’t allow babies. Is it even a real family? We suspect not. There are too many of them and are unlikely to be blood-related.
Is Mai a Ghost? Jim hears her fingers drag and click along the outside of a container while he is asleep. This could, of course, be cold-induced hallucination.
When Flora runs off, Jim turns from a suffering machine to an engine running on hate. Is she simply doing what he did with Mai — escaping from a claustrophobic situation?
Towards the end of the book, we start to wonder if Jim has lost all sense of emotion, save that of protecting Flora. But then we witness a scene where he has to kill one of the evolved beasts of this world. We see that murdering an animal leaves Jim feeling as if ‘every part of me wanted to be shed and burned.’ He is able to feel. But the question is now — can Flora?
I’ll not spoil the ending, save to say it will surprise you in a desolate sort of way. You will learn what happened to Mai, and the fate of both fathers.
This is a relatively short book which I had been anticipating for a long time. I can see now why there was an apparent delay in publication. The author has toiled over every aspect of the story to produce something that is enduring. This is one of the longest reviews I have ever written, and it is for many reasons. Partly, I’m still looking for answers to some of my questions. Additionally, I genuinely found myself dwelling on the scenes, invested as I was in the story.
If you read the book (and I hope you do), then I’d like to know if you find any of the answers yourself to the questions I have posed. B.P. Gregory has taken the time to craft an immersive tale that will persist in your imagination – and isn’t that the mark of all good literature?
In short, this book is brilliant. Go out and buy it now. But if you want to know more, then read on.
I enjoyed the last of Ms. Gregory’s books, ‘The Town’ and was eager to see where she would go with a story so innocuously titled as ‘Flora and Jim.’
The setting is a frozen, post-apocalyptic landscape similar to that found in the film, Extinction (2015.) There are also similar father-daughter relationship parallels. The other recent story I thought about in this respect was Netflix’s ‘Cargo’ albeit with a much different storyline (no zombies!)
I read the print version and was immediately intrigued by the little pictures at the top of each chapter consisting of numbered pieces of foil – perhaps sweet wrappers? I’m still puzzled by the non-sequential numbers printed on them, and I assume this is not a formatting mistake. Maybe the author wants us to scratch away at our heads long after we’ve finished the book?
The story features two fathers, the first being Jim. The other is called Alfred or ‘the other father’. Jim and Flora are chasing him. Oh, and Alfred has a son with him called ‘Fauna.’ So – Flora and Fauna., or flowers and animals. Are they related somehow? We never quite get to know, we simply understand that there is this all-consuming pursuit. It is revealed that Jim has retrieved Flora from Alfred’s company when Flora trails behind this escaping ‘other father’ and suffers a fit.
I identified with the description of Flora’s seizure as I have personal experience of this with my own father: the notion of the sky falling on the head, a traffic cone smell. Again, this all adds to the authenticity.
This ‘relentless pursuit’ aspect had a feel of Roland Deschaine’s quest chasing the Man in Black (Stephen King’s ‘Dark Tower’ if you’re not familiar.) It’s all-consuming, and we see how Jim’s obsession is gradually eclipsed by that of Flora.
The child-father language during the course of the story is endearing. The author induces an understanding of the pains of fatherhood when he describes ‘… the anxiety that squeezed my chest ever since Flora’s arrival in the world.’ Or his constant fear of ‘how casually her tissue-paper existence might tear, by slip or inattention.’
We rapidly pick up how strange the future existence in this world must be compared to our own. It’s done on a drip-feed basis and I like how the author deftly avoids ‘info-dump.’ Here are just a few examples:
— Flora can’t remember the things that were a norm for children before the catastrophe. Abandoned play equipment in a residential area is left alone because she doesn’t understand the concept of apparatus designed for children to enjoy. Such is this miserable existence.
— The routine is paramount. Frozen days are spent searching for a new place to shelter from the unliveable night. And you don’t go out at night — it’s too cold. One of Jim’s previous ‘family’ did and barely survived. (Part of him didn’t — ‘The night took up residence behind his face.’)
— If all the plants are gone, what is producing the oxygen? Later, Jim wonders this when he and Flora encounter a container park at a dock. He speculates whether the sea itself, the ‘cradle of living things’, could still harbour photosynthesising plants (seaweed, algae.) But all he sees is extinction. The speculation goes only partway to explaining the ‘science’ of this emerging new world. Another question is, how far in the future is this, that animals could have evolved so quickly into the fantastical beasts we encounter later in the book.
— The nature of the new fauna is wonderfully described in its full horror when Flora and Jim encounter a ‘tornado’ of migrating beasts on the ice surface of a bay. ‘… so terrifying it was funny; snapped that little cut-off switch (in their brains) for ‘too much’ right off.’
— Jim is well versed in survival craft. This is evidenced when a predator is known to be tracking them. It takes some well-used blankets and drapes to cover their tracks through the snow. Jim then backtracks carefully by putting his feet in his previous footprints then sprints off in another direction.
So, a strange world indeed. But well pencilled-out.
The aforementioned family forms a basis for flashbacks in Jim’s narrative. It appears to consist of a large group of aunts and uncles. The story spends time with each of these minor characters, describing each one as a person coping with the catastrophe that has occurred in their own way. This is artfully done in the space of a few sentences, and highlights another strength of the story — it is ultimately about people.
We learn about Jim’s eventual partner, Mai. How she was brought to the family by scouts in a grief stricken state. At this point, we don’t know what has become of her original family but we are given to understand that maybe she has been kidnapped by Jim’s. We learn that Jim’s ‘family’ weren’t his natural family and that he eventually escapes from them with Mai.
Another major strength of this book is the superb descriptions (particularly about how wretched the living is in this world) abound. Here’s just a few of my favourites:
‘ … beard like spider’s legs appearing from a cave.’
‘ … it was like the lavish table of our ancestors was being devoured by ghosts in front of our eyes’ (referring to the culling of humans when the earth’s temperature dropped.)
‘My stomach a miserable shrivelled thing suckling on my spine.’ (Hunger is a constant companion in this world.)
There are more poetic phrases, such as, ‘the whole broken tooth structure ringing with hymns to a lost summer (summing up the appearance of the frozen landscape.)
The author has laboured over these sentences, word by word, carefully crafting them to place the reader in a desolate scene, and feel for these two vulnerable but strong characters.
As with books like Cormac McArthy’s ‘The Road’, you wonder what motivates these survivors to go on living. Life is just another day in which you don’t kill yourself. Or, in Flora and Jim’s words, ‘Life clings on in pockets and corners.’ Then again, we are reminded of the fleeing ‘other father.’
In caring for Flora Jim is constantly staving off depression: ‘Despite all my efforts, depression was a page stuck to my forehead.’
As the story unfolds, we see in Jim’s former partner, Mai, someone he dreads or at least wants to leave behind. Why?
Later, we learn why Mai and Jim had to leave the family – spoiler: they wanted a baby, and the family doesn’t allow babies. Is it even a real family? We suspect not. There are too many of them and are unlikely to be blood-related.
Is Mai a Ghost? Jim hears her fingers drag and click along the outside of a container while he is asleep. This could, of course, be cold-induced hallucination.
When Flora runs off, Jim turns from a suffering machine to an engine running on hate. Is she simply doing what he did with Mai — escaping from a claustrophobic situation?
Towards the end of the book, we start to wonder if Jim has lost all sense of emotion, save that of protecting Flora. But then we witness a scene where he has to kill one of the evolved beasts of this world. We see that murdering an animal leaves Jim feeling as if ‘every part of me wanted to be shed and burned.’ He is able to feel. But the question is now — can Flora?
I’ll not spoil the ending, save to say it will surprise you in a desolate sort of way. You will learn what happened to Mai, and the fate of both fathers.
This is a relatively short book which I had been anticipating for a long time. I can see now why there was an apparent delay in publication. The author has toiled over every aspect of the story to produce something that is enduring. This is one of the longest reviews I have ever written, and it is for many reasons. Partly, I’m still looking for answers to some of my questions. Additionally, I genuinely found myself dwelling on the scenes, invested as I was in the story.
If you read the book (and I hope you do), then I’d like to know if you find any of the answers yourself to the questions I have posed. B.P. Gregory has taken the time to craft an immersive tale that will persist in your imagination – and isn’t that the mark of all good literature?
October 1, 2019
Have been haunted by this one ever since I finished. I found myself equally sympathetic and disgusted by Jim and his Sisyphean task of keeping his young ward alive, knowing full well what kind of future he was delivering her to. A man with an ugly past and an increasingly corrupted future doggedly trying to keep one light on at the end of the world. Just beautiful.
July 12, 2019
The world has froze, animals have dwindled down to super predators, and food is scarce unless you really, really lower your standards. While Flora & Jim is a post-apocalyptic novel, the focus here is on the relationship between father and daughter. What won't Jim do for daughter, Flora? What actions will he use his daughter to justify? Is anything off-limits ethically? And if not, what is the cost to his daughter who is growing up too fast... Well paced, plenty of tension, splashes of humor. I enjoyed this, kept the pages turning!
April 30, 2020
If a grim, immersive snowbound tale is your bag then you need to get into this. It's an engrossing story of a father and daughter in pursuit of another pair across a post-apocalyptic wasteland - and how their relationship changes as their situation becomes more frightening. With detailed descriptions of survival it reminded me somewhat of The Road, but with more shocking moments of gore and horror. Looking forward to the next installment from this author.
January 12, 2019
Vast. Bleak. Beautiful. A moving tale of survival and terror that will chill you to the bone.
September 28, 2018
This was bleak and left me needing more. This wasn't the story I had expected to find. My review is posted here ---> https://wp.me/p5t5Tf-1GU
January 18, 2023
The world that BP Gregory has created here is absolutely incredible in scale and consequence. A father full of doubt and human weaknesses will do anything to give the very best for his daughter. Yet how can he do that when the world has already been lost? I found this novel to be staggering in its vision, and the storytelling is amongst the best I have read for a very long time. As a father, the narrative resonated deeply with me, and the quiet terror of trying your very best in the face of horrific failure took my breath away at times. A dark tale that is pierced by a humour as terrific as the sun, which could leave one snow blind. Flora & Jim are moving, thrilling, funny, and all the emotions between. There are ghosts on the journey it takes you on. Maybe you'll know some of them.
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March 17, 2021FLORA & JIM - By BP Gregory
Source: eBook/I Purchased/2018
Cover Image - by Marcel Jancovic
Unfortunately, this book is a DNF – 7% I had a hard time getting into this one, but I look forward to reading more of Gregory’s in the future.
Source: eBook/I Purchased/2018
Cover Image - by Marcel Jancovic
Unfortunately, this book is a DNF – 7% I had a hard time getting into this one, but I look forward to reading more of Gregory’s in the future.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews