tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post4385743733373712224..comments2024-03-18T10:29:46.055+00:00Comments on Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff: The Death House by Sarah Pinborough - A ReviewKen Armstronghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07775956557261111127noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-21959219856263706472015-03-09T08:55:28.825+00:002015-03-09T08:55:28.825+00:00I'm always glad to have a book recommended to ...I'm always glad to have a book recommended to me and Sarah's "The Death House" sounds as if it will be just up my street. Will Kindle it now. Thank you, Ken, for the recommendation and thank you, Sarah for penning it!Karen Redmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18368078023802765569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-19613084270501278982015-03-09T01:37:21.699+00:002015-03-09T01:37:21.699+00:00I never read Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me G...I never read Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel <i>Never Let Me Go</i> (although I did see the film) but from what I’ve read on Amazon about <i>The Death House</i> I can imagine they might be cousins. Sarah talks about the book on the Gollancz blog <a href="http://www.gollancz.co.uk/2015/03/the-origins-of-the-death-house/" rel="nofollow">here</a>. She describes it as dystopian fiction—and Ishiguro’s novel is similarly labelled—but there’s been so much written especially in recent years and for younger readers that the term’s less helpful than it used to be. I’m sure there will be people living in alternate realities who would consider the world you and I find ourselves in a dystopia and it probably is. In the 1930s H.G. Wells came up with an outline for what would become the film <i>Things to Come</i>. In it he imagined a biological weapon called the "wandering sickness" a plague so virulent that the infected are shot on sight; no questions asked; no guilt felt. And now we have a TV show called <i>The Walking Dead</i> and it really isn’t a million miles away from what Wells imagined. Would any kid born into either world talk about it as a dystopia? Or would their fiction conceive something still more horrible?<br /><br />In 1989 DC comics trademarked the “Elseworlds” name and over the years they’ve published dozens of alternate takes on their stable of heroes like <i>Superman: Red Son</i> in which Kal-L's rocket crash-lands in Ukraine, and the Man of Steel becomes the USSR's main hero. I like these <i>Sliding Doors</i> kinds of stories and I get the feeling that this is what <i>The Death House</i> is going to be. A What if…? <i>What If</i> was Marvel’s version of Elseworlds. What would happen if children with a genetic likelihood of disease were sent away to a remote nursing home to die? What would that world be like? Is it any more horrible than breeding clones to use a body parts? It wasn’t that long ago that we used to kidnap people from Africa and treat them as slaves. It was perfectly normal. Was that a dystopia? <br /><br />I’ve bought the book. No idea when I’ll get round to reading it since I’m up to my armpits in editing my next novel but I will get round to it; you’ve piqued my interest with your non-review. I can’t tell you how often I’ve wished I could get away with something like this. In the olden—pre-dystopian?—days we’d meet for a coffee and just before you were about to leave you’d go, “Hang on a sec. Before I forget. Read this book last week. Don’t want to say any more. Just trust me. You’ll love it.” At which point you’d haul a paperback out of your backpack or jacket or Tesco carrier bag and toss it to me. “Let me know what you think.” That never happens nowadays. It really is a peculiar world we find ourselves in.<br /><br />It’s like friends. How can you possibly be friends with a woman with whom you’ve only tweeted? I can just imagine what the likes of Nancy Mitford or Evelyn Waugh, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin—some of the great letter writers of the last century—would think about Twitter: a world where communication is restricted to blocks of texts not exceeding 140 characters—truly dystopian.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com