Psycho ~ Robert Bloch

This is not the graphic horror that I was expecting, and it’s not particularly long, and because the story is so well known the revelations did not surprise, but I can expect it would have been an excellent read when first published in 1959.

Bloch does an excellent job of building the character of the self loathing Norman Bates.  There are three fractured characters, Norman the man who runs the Bates Motel, Norman the child who needs his mother, and then there’s Mother herself.  Mother is insanely jealous and when Norman shows an interest in a young lady who’s traveling alone it only spells danger.  The problem is the young woman is on the run with an investigator after her and it doesn’t take long to track her movements down to the Bates Motel. 

The famous shower scene is very disappointing— Mary is in the shower and when she sees the butcher's knife Bloch says it “was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head." Not a great deal of drama and horror there is there?!

What I liked about this novel was the question  it asked—how well do we know somebody?  And even—how well do we know ourselves?

Not a bad read at all but it shows what a great job Hitchcock did with the movie.

Disgrace ~ J M Coetzee

I only wish that this novel was longer than the 215 pages that it is.

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, it is a very human look at how quickly one can fall from grace and the effects of the anger that has continued from apartheid.

Lucy, the protagonists daughter who lives away from the city, understands the ways of the blacks and how it is she who must fit in with them, but even this does not spare her from the terrible assault on herself and her father David Lurie.  After David's resignation  from his University position (due to an indiscretion with a student) he stays with Lucy to escape the fall-out.  There he spends his time helping on her small farm and assisting in an animal clinic, but the vicious assault changes everything.

David does not understand his daughter's attitude towards what has happened to them, the local blacks and even herself, but he is from another generation.  However, towards the end of the novel he finds himself willing to try before he loses everything important in his life.

I think you would have had to experience life under apartheid and it's fallout to fully understand the range of emotions portrayed in his novel, but Coetzee writes it very simply and very well. I found it hard to put down.

Earth Abides - George R Stewart

Why I had not heard of this author prior to reading this novel amazes me.  When I googled it and checked out the forums it seems a lot of people did it at school in their English Literature Classes.  Why could I have not gone to one of those schools!  I had to do Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare!!

The godfather of the modern disaster movie, George R Stewart is famous for his novels such as Fire and Flood where the disaster is the central character.  However with Earth Abides, written in 1949, he has written an enduring post apocolyptic tale of survival and hope for mankind.

The inspiration for Stephen King’s The Stand I could see many parallels but rather than a supernatural tale what we have here is a matter of fact chronicle of what will happen when man loses his footprint on the Earth. The central character Isherwood Williams is a post graduate Geography student, recovering from a snake bite he obtained whilst taking a break in the mountains, when a plague decimates most of the world’s population. 

The novel spans through Ish’s lifetime as he comes to terms with the loss of his family, civilization and learning.  As nature recovers from Man’s dominance, those that are left find that rather than trying to reclaim civilization they slip back to a simple laid back existence, scavenging from the supermarkets and clothes stores. Relationships are formed and children are born and Ish becomes more of a tribal leader, much revered due to his learning but also a figure of awe who is rarely seen without the hammer that he had found in the mountains (and which becomes a symbol of superstition for the younger members of the tribe).

The University Library is taboo, and Ish’s last link to his life as a student, but as he grows older he realises that studious learning is no longer important. Practical knowledge of  how to hunt without bullets and how to make fire without matches are the only way to survival as the last links of civilization rust away or are burned to the ground.  Ish was lucky in a way that he still had his books, as you have to wonder with the advent of electronic resources and with book stores now closing their doors what would there be left if such a plague took place is our distant future?

Jake: Thank you so much for recommending this novel to me, I enjoyed every word.