Patrick’s Comments (group member since May 03, 2020)

Patrick’s comments from the Tome Time group.

Will try to get hold of a copy and catch up with you on this one. Tom Robbins was the one author in 'The Book of Forgotten Authors' who I'd not only heard of, but had read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

In that light, Caldwell was the one character whom the Ophiocordyceps was never able to control. But some good old-fashioned bacteria was able to finish her off...

Was the ending in the film different? I kind of liked how it was sort of like Day of Triffids but the plants win...

So it was just me who sort of sided with Dr Caldwell some of the time. She was trying to find a way to defeat the Hungries, after all...

That scene from Jurassic Park was my favourite moment in the film though...

It's good fun. The worst slog of a book I've read this year has been 'Already Dead' - which was beautifully written on a sentence-by-sentence level, but was totally devoid of anything resembling a plot or half-way interesting characters who did anything more than mumble their way through the book in a druggy haze...

There are members of the government whose effectiveness might be improved were they to turn into 6 foot mushrooms. Although to be fair, they haven't done anything so daft as trying to wipe out covid19 by carpet bombing the area north of London...

Also, the bungling government getting everything wrong during a pandemic outbreak. Spooky?!

Being from slightly further north, I don't really recognise the places that they visit. I've never been to Stevenage and assumed I wasn't missing much.

Every now and again, there's been a particular scene that has left me thinking "have I read this before?" - I'm fairly certain I haven't but I don't know whether it's because I'm remembering the occasional scene from a film or because the book is stealing from other post-apocalyptic books/films I've seen. Particularly the bit where Parks tries to act as though they are a military unit and he's the commander and basically gets told where to go...

I was wondering how old Melanie is meant to be. On the one hand, she's reading Greek myths but on the other, when Gallagher's looking for something to read to her when they find themselves staying overnight in the, what? prison? asylum? care home? the books he picks out for her to read are the kind of thing I'd read to Hannah... But then if Gallagher grew up in a post-apocalyptic waste-land maybe he can't really read himself?

I wonder if I'm more sympathetic to Caldwell than Carey intends me to be?

The whole book moves fairly fast... more homing pigeon than loping pigeon.

I was glad that Caldwell survived the base being over-run, think keeping her makes the story more interesting. Trying to remember what happened in the film, but I'm assuming that they're going to be disappointed as and when they get to Beacon...

Chapter 29 ends on one of the more amusing one-sentence notes of despair I can remember reading...

Karen wrote: "I couldn’t stop thinking of this snail’s horror fest though, when they went through the David Attenborough segment on how spores burst through ants from the top of trees to have a better distribution range"

I see your zombie snails and raise you parasitic wasps: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/body-s...

I'm enjoying this anyway - a bit more easy-reading than the 600 page history book I'm working my way through at the same time...

Started early on this one, what with having the week off work. Melanie's early chapters, especially when Dr Caldwell's chapters explained what was actually going on, reminded me ever so slightly of 'Never Let Me Go'. But with zombies. Also getting more than a hint of John Wyndham though that might just be that all post-apocalyptic fiction reminds me of John Wyndham a bit.

Of course, because I've seen the film, I know the Beacon is doomed, but I can't actually remember exactly what happens after that. Quite like the way that nobody is exactly a villain - what Dr Caldwell and Sgt. Parks are doing makes perfect sense from their own perspective.

Can't let the line "made balloon animals out of their colons" go entirely unremarked either.

Also: New word - adverbìously. Quickly, he grabbed his pen and began furiously putting words to the page, adverbiously.

I don't entirely rule out the possibility that this is what has happened to me. Although 2020 has been a rather meh hallucination.

So I'm not missing much this week then?

Karen wrote: " Did you notice how on the cover art that there is no hand holding his. He is alone. So were they even real to begin with? "

Now you mention it, that does make a lot of sense. As if it's a childhood fantasy world that he retreats back to from time to time when having to deal with something difficult - in this case, a funeral. After all, why not decide that your new nanny is not just a bossy cow, but a monster from another dimension whom only you can defeat? My experience of infants' school would have been better if only I'd realised that's what Mrs Hobson actually was. Which is kind of appropriate because the whole book feels like it's very specifically aimed at adults who are nostalgic for children's stories.

I really liked the writing, but I did wonder at the end when I was reading the acknowledgements where he says it started off as a short story whether it might actually have worked better as a (long-ish) short story instead of a novel. The plot felt like it was stretched ever so slightly thin.

Karen wrote: "The more I read, the more convinced I am that Ursula Monkton was just trying to give ‘George’ precisely what he wanted - for the world he hated to just stop existing..."

I'd never thought of that before but you might be right. And maybe there was something about the connection he made with Lettie Hempstock that led him to change his mind. Which in a sort-of-roundabout way maybe confused her just enough that she was defeated.

Sarah wrote: "Strange, Buffy is starting a rerun on E4 tonight :)"

It might have been on my mind because I saw the ad when I was watching Film4 yesterday - or the article in the Guardian today listing the 20 best episodes.

Maybe. I think we have a name for him now - he's George. And the cleaners are un-birds?

I liked the bit where he had to stay inside the circle. For some reason it reminded me of old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is strange, what with none of the characters being 7 year olds. Wonder if the ending will reveal any more about what his parents and sister were really like? As you say, sometimes its hinted that his dad, in particular, might be quite a nasty piece of work.

Yes - be interesting to see whether that gets developed at all in the last hundred pages. Suggestion is she's more Umbrage than Voldemort... I sense Hempstock has her number, but the Cleaners sound altogether more sinister...

To be fair, I'm taking bits of two different books - the unicorn turns up in a book about a dragon, a knight and a princess who are flying doctors, while the giraffe librarian is in a book about a sulky panda called pom-pom.