The Rapture

Synopsis: In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters - a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before? And what can love mean in 'interesting times'? A haunting story of human passion and burning faith set against an adventure of tectonic proportions, "The Rapture" is an electrifying psychological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind's self-destruction in a world on the brink.

Review: Oh dear, I thought it was too good to last. This is the first book this year that I really didn't like at all and thought about abandoning. It may not be entirely the book's fault, I don't really like psychological thrillers that much and so from the start I was regretting my choice. I loved 'Ark Baby' by the same author and had read excellent reviews for 'The Rapture' so I threw caution to the wind and bought this on a 3 for 2 at Waterstones. Ah folly, thy name is Poppyshake.

The narrator, psychologist Gabrielle Fox, must be one of the most dreary lead characters I've ever come across. She has been confined to a wheelchair ever since she lost the use of her legs in a devastating car accident so you can understand her being vulnerable and insecure. She has no spark though, she is all resentment and negativity and this begins to wear you down after a while, I found her hard to warm to or care about. She also makes some shockingly appalling decisions regarding the care and treatment of Bethany, in fact nearly everyone surrounding Bethany makes appalling decisions, decisions that stretch credibility to breaking point.

Bethany's character was another problem, she is so relentlessly aggressive, crude, insulting and self centred that, coupled with the fact that she killed her mother with a screwdriver, you really can't like or have empathy with her. Again her behaviour became tedious and even after you find out what caused her to go so wildly off the rails (even I could suss this out after reading that her father was an evangelical hellfire and brimstone preacher) she never really changes in character at all. Bethany claims to have a gift for predicting natural disasters and though this is poo-pooed by most as the ramblings of a megalomaniacal attention seeker, the accuracy of her predictions begins to interest and alarm Gabrielle and her love interest, physicist Frazer Melville (and this was another annoyance, Gabrielle always refers to Frazer as Frazer Melville, throughout the whole book, despite sleeping with him and having chocolate based sex, he is never just Frazer .. but always Frazer Melville .. it's not as if there are any other Frazer's to get him confused with, it was just so irritating) and then there is Joy, Bethany's previous psychotherapist, who believes that Bethany is not only predicting these events but causing them.

The book is set some time in the future and global warming and natural disasters have been increasing rapidly (and to be fair to the author, the attention to detail concerning eco and geological matters is meticulously researched and well written) along with this there has been a 'Faith Wave', with a growing group of Christian fundamentalists believing that 'the rapture' is fast approaching. Bethany has predicted that a devastating tsunami will hit Europe and place most of it under water and it's up to those that believe in her predictions to try to alert as many people as they can.

The last third of the book just got increasingly sillier and sillier, and this was the part where I felt like giving up on it. If you took all of the disaster movies that you've watched or seen the trailers for and put them in a big melting pot you'd probably come up with a plotline very much like this one, complete with a countdown to catastrophe, corruption, a zealous and hostile religious mob, a disturbed and unpredictable teenager, unheeded scientific evidence, a helpless woman and a small band of flawed but incredibly plucky heroes. I can't believe she didn't have the president of the USA rescue them whilst piloting some sort of combat aircraft, ok so the story takes place in the UK but given every other implausible development, it wouldn't have seemed out of place. She did manage to place the climax in the 2012 London Olympic Stadium though so hats off for that.

It wasn't for me, it might be for you if you loved 'The Day After Tomorrow' and '2012' but even then I doubt there's anything new here. I knew what was going to happen at the end and that's a sure sign that it had been painted in three feet high letters long before the final chapter. It will probably be made into a movie or TV drama .. oh dear!

The Road

Synopsis: A man and his young son traverse a blasted American landscape, covered with "the ashes of the late world." The man can still remember the time before. The boy knows only this time. There is nothing for them but survival — they are "each other's world entire" — and the precious last vestiges of their own humanity. At once brutal and tender, despairing and rashly hopeful, spare of language and profoundly moving, The Road is a fierce and haunting meditation on the tenuous divide between civilization and savagery, and the essential, sometimes terrifying power of filial love. It is a masterpiece.

Review: It doesn't get much bleaker than this, a truly tragic tale of a man and his son trying to find their way to the coast in post apocalyptic America (well, the country's not actually named but I took it to be America because of one or two slight references, though it could be anywhere). The writing has been pared to the bone, there is hardly any dialogue and in that respect it felt rather like reading Hemingway. There are no chapters, just fairly short paragraphs of either description or dialogue, every word is weighed and measured. The man and the boy exchange a few short sentences every now and then, the boy seeking understanding or comfort and the man trying to reassure and instill hope or else relaying simple instructions.

But for all that it's not overly descriptive or wordy, it's so beautifully written that you can clearly see that ash ridden, bleak and desolate landscape and feel the desperation of the man and boy. When you think about a landscape devoid of animals, devoid even of rats to feed on corpses, devoid of plant life and sunlight it's utterly unendurable, and the writer makes you feel the loss of these things yourself as you read.

We're not told why this catastrophe happened, which makes it all a bit more terrifying because when a reason is given you can usually find a way of persuading yourself that the chances of it really happening are so slim as to be negligible. We just know that everything, and practically everyone, is dead, and the world has been thrown into perpetual winter.

It felt right that there weren't any chapters, there was nothing to break the spell, no obvious resting places. I had to tear myself away from the book from time to time, in order to try and lighten my mood, but really, from the moment I read that their aim was to find their way to the coast, I was so anxious that they should get there that I just kept reading on and on.

Although it's not what you'd call an action-packed book, there are some pretty horrific scenes, and also some times when their relentless slow trudge across the scorched earth turns into a desperate flight for survival. There are only a few people left on earth, how many is not known, but among them are some pretty terrifying people, people who will do everything and anything to ensure their survival. People with nothing to lose.

All you are hoping for, is that the man and the boy reach the coast and some sort of safety, you celebrate every small piece of good fortune that comes their way and you feel fear whenever they see or meet anyone on the road.I can see that not everybody would like it, it's pretty harrowing stuff. There isn't any light relief or jokes (I imagine they're dead like everything else) but it's compelling and powerful.

I was truly terrified by it, an incredible piece of writing.