Sunday 24 March 2013

Hope: A Tragedy

I'm unusual, I think, among bloggers.

I don't have a book in me.

I'm not saying I don't enjoy writing (obviously), or that I don't enjoy (very much) people reading what I write (hint) but I've got no half written scraps of a novel, no idea, no characters bursting to be given life on the page.  Fundamentally I've got no imagination. Not like that anyway.

So I'm always a little bit in awe of people who do.  Who can wake up one morning and think:  "Here's an idea for a book: what if someone bought a house in a country town and then found Anne Frank living in the attic?"

To take an example not entirely at random.

That's it.  The germ (at least as I imagine it) of the plot of Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander.  Doesn't it make you want to read it? Isn't it such a simple, genius idea?   Imagine that Anne Frank hadn't died.  Imagine what that would do to the iconography and industry around her and her diary.  Imagine what it would be like to be a geriatric Anne Frank, still hiding.  Or the person who found her.

It's a fascinating book. An extraordinary book.  A book that did make me laugh and didn't make me cry, rather to my surprise.  A book that, if I think about it too much, I find very disturbing and frightening and really rather bleak, but which I recommend to you anyway.

In the spirit of hope: I hoped, when I picked up The Drop by Michael Connolly (lent to me by a friend) that it would be better than I was expecting.  It wasn't.  Not a tragedy, but a waste of time nonetheless.


Images, as usual, from Amazon. Thank you to them.

7 comments:

  1. I hated the drop too! I also do not have a book in me

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  2. OOh, thanks. I've just finished Gone Girl on the Kindle, and looking for something else to download. Hope, it is. (Gone Girl, btw, good easy reading. Lingers in your mind (or mine, at least))

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    1. Except I've just read a spoiler of it... Grrr! Any more recommendations welcome.

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  3. Well maybe you don't have a book in you but you can certainly sell a book. I'm an author, would you mind selling mine :0

    I have a stack of books waiting for me to read and now I want to add one more. I don't know if I should thank you or curse you (j/k would never do that of course) Thanks for the recommendation

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  4. Would I like your book?!

    I know what you mean though - the pile by my bed isn't getting any smaller...

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I know. I'm sorry. I hate these word recognition, are you a robot, guff things too, but having just got rid of a large number of ungrammatical and poorly spelt adverts for all sorts of things I don't want, and especially don't want on my blog, I'm hoping that this will mean that only lovely people, of the actually a person variety, will comment.

So please do. Comments are great...