Changes

Something has happened, something very nasty and on a submarine , a pregnant elephant is one of only a handful of animals living below the waves. We follow Nerissa Crane, a vet, as she remembers recent events, looks after the animals and falls into a world of intrigue.

The subtext of this book, the almost unspoken story, is beautiful in a fragile and damaged way. There is something genuinely compelling and attractive about the best post -apocalyptical fiction. This book has at its core a sincerity I've only really felt in Nevil Shute's ''On the Beach''. In Shute's book , there has been a full-scale nuclear war, the Northern Hemisphere is dead and the last known American nuclear submarine is making its way to Australia to surrender to its Navy. The last bastion of society is trying to just carry on as normal whilst a radioactive cloud rolls ever closer bringing death for all. The falseness, the emptiness and the self-delusion is are hypnotic and this book has all these traits in spades.

There is a lot going on here and the author has a clear passion for the written word. The novel is short and feels simplistic at times but the simplicity is fake, superficial. Under the surface , this is a layered work where the subtext is as much a part of the tale as the narrative itself.

Further reading: [[The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood]] . You might like to try [[Deaf at Spiral Park by Kieran Devaney]], but we had our reservations.