The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
And he reduces and reduces and simplifies things down to often a single character.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
So one character comes to represent one entire strata of society or a whole idea.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
So here we have the elite, the breeder, the other, the defender.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
And in some way, and it's not a criticism, the word simplifying, he's reducing big ideas down to small usable parts.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
And in lots of ways, that's what a novelist does.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
There's a kind of flatness and I think a deliberate flatness to both the prose style.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
It's an unadorned prose style, but also this is a flat world.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
We're sitting on a grey wall.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
We're staring out at a flat sea.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
It's an airless world.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
Yeah, so there's been this event, the whole point of this, the reason for this world of sea on the other side of the world is this event, at some point in the past, called the change.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
And this is climate change.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
So on the other side of the wall is a devastated, flooded world.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
And this is the reason why the others are so desperate to get onto this, our side of the wall, is because this is where safety resides and out there is death and peril and...
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
time frames in here are all very nebulous and i think this is this idea that history has been stripped in some way from the lives of these people the change was this thing that happened at some indeterminate point in the past and we don't quite know what life was like then we get little hints we have our joseph k's parents when he goes to bed they watch documentaries about the beach
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
Because there are no beaches.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
There are no beaches.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
There are just these hard lines now.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
So there's this idea that some people have hold of some memories of the past, but it isn't allowed to infiltrate into the present.
The Bookshelf
On Caoilinn Hughes' Orchid & the Wasp, Steven Carroll's The Year of the Beast, John Lanchester's The Wall and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Result
By ironing over the past, people are allowed to exist in this quite horrific world.