Hanna Jameson

Having read and loved The Last by Hanna Jameson, I was really looking forward to this one. It’s a subject that feels all too familiar – a global pandemic (although mainly affecting America) – and a small cast of characters trying to live through it.

The book opens at a wedding and the start of a budding relationship when Yun and Emory meet for the first time. However, when a wedding guest simply sits down and can’t, or won’t, get up, this heralds the start of a terrifying phenomenon. Gradually, thousands of people fall victim to this mysterious illness or syndrome, simply sitting down without warning. Nobody ever recovers, and after two or three weeks, the ‘sitter’ dies.

Yun and Emory are trying to navigate this situation while at the same time trying to make their own relationship work, despite their various issues. Meanwhile, Yun’s oldest and best friend Andrew is in a failing marriage and when he meets dancer Fin, he realises that it’s time to stop the lies he has been telling everyone, including himself, his whole life.

I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy this book, but after looking forward so much to reading it, I have to admit I was slightly disappointed. The pandemic, or phenomenon is more of a backdrop to the main story here, which is the relationships between the four main characters. Unfortunately the parts about the pandemic were the most interesting to me by far. I do normally like character driven stories, but the issue here was that I found it difficult to really care about them. Yun and Emory were not particularly sympathetic, and while I don’t have to like characters to enjoy reading about them, I just found myself getting annoyed with their angsty self-absorbed outlooks. Andrew and Fin were more likeable and I did care more about them; however at least three of these four seemed bent on self-destruction and I found myself lacking patience.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the book, and it’s certainly not to say that I wouldn’t read more by Hanna Jameson, because I definitely would. But unlike The Last, the characters in this one just didn’t gel with me, so ended up feeling slightly let down.… (altro)

While American academic Jon Keller is at a conference in a remote hotel in Switzerland, there's a nuclear attack in Washington, and probably elsewhere. The internet goes down. Ordinary life is suspended, so it's hard to know what's going on. He'd left his wife back home not on the best of terms, but now the reality of existing in the here and now with 20 or so strangers presents itself. Jon records everything in his journal, including his obsession with the apparent murder of a child. The realism of the scenario makes this a potentially thrilling and unsettling read. But the characters have little life, and Jon himself seems quite unpleasant, so I nearly abandoned the novel several times. I'm probably being unfair. I don't enjoy dystopian fiction, and this hasn't changed my mind. Did I believe the ending? Not at all.… (altro)

American historian Jon Keller is stopping at a hotel in Switzerland for a work conference when the world descends into nuclear war. Jon is one of twenty people, both guests and staff, who decide to stay at the hotel and forge a new existence there. But then the body of a young girl is found and without a clear date of death, nobody is sure whether there is a murderer in the hotel and Jon becomes obsessed with finding out.

This book has been on my shelf for a few years – it came out in 2019 and was set at the same time. It’s post apocalyptic/dystopian fiction, which used to be one of my favorite genres until Covid-19 happened, and suddenly it felt a lot less like fiction, and something I didn’t want to read about (hey, I’ve only just watched 28 Days Later, despite having more viewing time than I could ever have anticipated during furlough)!

Anyway, I recently bought Hanna Jameson’s novel, Are You Happy Now? which is a story about a pandemic – there is a theme here – and derive synopsis, it cided I should read this first. And actually it’s bloody brilliant!!

Despite the synopsis, the book is equally focussed on how the people living at the hotel try to forge a new life and to some extent make a new community, as it is on the. murder of the young girl. As a historian, Jon decides to chronicle the new life that they are all living. One of the first things that they lose is access to the internet and therefore any news reports or communications from other people. There is suspicion amongst different factions of the group – primarily it seems between the English speakers and the non-English speakers – and concerns about what they will do when food stores run low. Is it safe to go outside and look for more food? Are there other survivors? And how do they deal with transgressions by members of their group?

I found the book hard to put down and scarily believable. In such a situation, how would you know who to trust? Who if anyone should lead the group? Everyone is fighting their own battle; Jon is particularly upset about how he failed to respond to his wife’s last text message, sent after he had left for Switzerland when their marriage was in trouble.

I was riveted from beginning to end, and although I found the resolution about the death of the young girl somewhat surprising and probably the weakest aspect of the whole story, I eagerly anticipate reading Are You Happy Now? Not quite yet though; I need something a bit more upbeat first.… (altro)

A dystopian thriller beaten with a political stick!

Don’t let the political stuck put you off, politics is in no way forced down your throat or the main plot in this book, it just has a few digs in places. It gives no names but the flashing neon sign is one not even I could miss and I don’t follow politics at all!

Set in a hotel in Switzerland a handful of guests and staff watch the end of the world before everything goes dark. This is their story, how they survived the nuclear apocalypse one claustrophobic day at a time.

With some great characters that you will love and love to hate this is the end of the world in the 21st century where the death of the internet and social media is as traumatic as the end of humankind its self!

Told from the first person prospective, Dr. Jon Keller an American lecturer who was staying at the hotel attending a conference begins chronicling events beginning from Day One. It follows his own thoughts and actions as well as the other guests as they all try to come to terms with being the possible sole survivors of the end of the world.

What would you do? How do you survive with none of the 21st century luxuries we are all so reliant on in this day and age?

Well written and thought provoking it is a book for our time, it is a book that will linger in your thoughts way after you have turned the last page.

A great edition to the dystopian/apocalyptic genre with an added murder mystery.

https://debbiesbookreviews.wordpress.com/2019/05/12/the-last-by-hanna-jameson/… (altro)