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Janette Turner Hospital - Due Preparations For The Plague


Freewheeling Andy

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This is the literary political thriller. Literary, in the sense that it's pushing the boundaries of genre fiction.

 

Lowell's mother died in a hijacking gone wrong in 1987. He always worries when it gets towards the anniversary. His life is a mess. Around 14th anniversary of the accident his father also dies semi-mysteriously.

 

This novel plays with different characters, and different methods of story telling, pushing on this tale of international epionage, of the amorality of the secret services, of psychopaths.

 

What seem to be a disparate and worrying collection of coincidences, enough to drive a reader insane, slowly coalesce, and you begin to realise why everything fits together.

 

This book is harrowing, in places. There are some pretty gruesome scenes, but they aren't redundant. They are necessary.

 

The setting of the book is the US East Coast in late summer 2001. It is clearly written to be a setting as a precursor to 9/11. Sometimes the nods to what happens afterwards are perhaps a little too knowing - always a risk with any novel set in the past.

 

I don't think this is quite as grand and glorious as Hospital's other novel I read, Oyster, but it's still pretty excellent as it plays with classical references and metaphors to keep the story going.

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