Changes

|title=The Guard

|sort=Guard

|author=Peter Terrin

|reviewer=John Lloyd

|rating=4.5

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|isbn=978-0857050878

|pages=288

|publisher=MacLehose Press

|date=August 2012

|summary=Pinter meets sci-fi in this tale of two protection officers in a basement carpark with something happening outside.

}}

Harry and Michel are very good at their job, even if we might think their job is not that great. They and they alone are responsible for protecting the building they live in. Designed as an impregnable fortress containing many immense, palatial apartments inhabited by the ultra-rich, the only way in is through the basement carpark, where they reside in their own small patch of territory. They are certainly diligent – inspecting their stash of munitions twice a day, even if nothing could possibly interfere with their supply of bullets, and navigating around the large expanse of space where each of the forty floors above them has space for three supercars. But while one seems to be dreaming of things he might not get to witness – promotion to guarding villas in Elysian fields with becoming owner's wives, the other seems to be hearing things that might not actually be there to be heard…

For another tight, literary but sprightly read in an apocalyptic world, we can definitely recommend [[The Dog Stars by Peter Heller]].

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