The Pesthouse
by Jim Crace
Blurb:
Once the safest, most prosperous place on earth, the United States is now a lawless, scantly populated wasteland. The machines have stopped. The government has collapsed. Farmlands lie fallow and the soil is contaminated by toxins. Across the country, families have packed up their belongings to travel eastward toward the one hope passage on a ship to Europe.Franklin Lopez and his brother, Jackson, are only days away from the ocean when Franklin, nearly crippled by an inflamed knee, is forced to stop. In the woods near his temporary refuge, Franklin comes upon an isolated stone building. Inside he finds Margaret, a woman with a deadly infection and confined to the Pesthouse to sweat out her fever. Tentatively, the two join forces and make their way through the ruins of old America. Confronted by bandits rounding up men for slavery, finding refuge in the Ark, a religious community that makes bizarre demands on those they shelter, Franklin and Margaret find their wariness of each other replaced by deep trust and an intimacy neither one has ever experienced before.
My Reaction:
It took a little time to get into the flow of the language with this one, and even once I did, I had some issues with the pacing, but on the whole, I found this an interesting tale. I appreciated that it wasn't remotely as gratuitously dark as so much post-apocalyptic fiction tends to be; that made for a nice change.
There's a lot I still don't understand about the world the author built in this book. Why have people forgotten so much about their history, for instance, while they've managed to hold on to other things (like the traditional, Founding-Father names)?
Anyway, I find I don't have much to say about this, now that I'm done with it. It's different... If you don't mind a meandering pace and feel intrigued by a future civilization that feels more like a medieval/Old West mash-up than The Jetsons, this is for you. Ah, just be forewarned that it's a post-apocalyptic romance, minus much of what you usually find in a romance! (It's an odd book.)
