⋙ Download The Casualties A Novel Nick Holdstock 9781250059512 Books

The Casualties A Novel Nick Holdstock 9781250059512 Books

Download As PDF : The Casualties A Novel Nick Holdstock 9781250059512 Books

The Casualties A Novel Nick Holdstock 9781250059512 Books

I enjoyed the style of writing, but the ending was a little strange. I am still undecided.


Tags : The Casualties: A Novel [Nick Holdstock] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>In Nick Holdstock's The Casualties, </i> a man recounts the final weeks of his neighborhood before the apocalyptic event that only a few of the eccentric residents will survive.</b> <b></b> Samuel Clark likes secrets. He wants to know the hidden stories of the bizarre characters on the little streets of Edinburgh,Nick Holdstock,The Casualties: A Novel,Thomas Dunne Books,1250059518,Science Fiction - Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic,City and town life - Scotland - Edinburgh,City and town life;Scotland;Edinburgh;Fiction.,Edinburgh (Scotland),Interpersonal relations,Interpersonal relations;Fiction.,Life change events,Life change events;Fiction.,Secrecy,English Science Fiction And Fantasy,FICTION Science Fiction Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Literary,Literary,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945),Science Fiction,Science Fiction Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic,literary fiction; contemporary novels; contemporary literature; apocalyptic books; post apocalyptic novels; apocalypse; science fiction novels; science fiction and fantasy; speculative fiction; edinburgh; scotland; scottish literature; scottish authors

The Casualties A Novel Nick Holdstock 9781250059512 Books Reviews

Time is running out for Edinburgh, Scotland, and for much of the Western world, for that matter. They just don't know it yet. But we, the readers, know, because the story is told from a time long after the flaming rocks from the sky ravaged most of North America and all of Europe, from the voice of a Survivor. Only near the end of the novel do we learn more about the identity of the narrator and his relationship to the characters. The book is his reflection on life in Edinburgh, more specifically on the neighborhood of Comely Bank, before things changed forever, and the preoccupation of one Samuel Clark with the human oddities of his home the man who lived under the bridge, the woman with the cracked face, the nymphomaniac, Toby the mentally-challenged obese boy/man.

"So if I speak of these characters fondly, it is not because I am nostalgic for that era. Quite the opposite. I just think we should remember the old world as it actually was. Not only the average, but also the exception". [3]

Though the post-apocalypse looms over the novel, it never becomes the focus. We see no images, no graphic descriptions. What it does is overshadow everything with a sadness, a realization of what will soon be lost, made all the more poignant by the ignorance of the populace of what is about to happen. Rather than a run-of-the-mill Post-Apocalyptic novel, with its wide scope and science fiction tropes, THE CASUALITIES is narrowly focused, personality and emotion-driven. The final chapter (the last 52 pages) is riveting; some amazing writing. By the end, one must wonder who are the real casualties.

Beautifully written, with interesting characters, and unexpected turns, THE CASUALTIES was a great find among the new novels of 2015.
I think part of scoring here reflects on the disappointment of wanting to like a book based on the premise and the author's approach more than I ended up liking it upon completion.

This is not a very long book, and yet as it progressed I felt it dragged a bit. It felt like a novella expanded unnecessarily into a short novel.

This in part was likely due to the fact that all the characters just got to be a bit too surreal. Too bleak. To mired in a life that never seemed worth living in the end. The poignant aspects of everyone's lives starts out to be engrossing and a rich read, but halfway through it just felt like it was being piled on and that it was a treading water phase that dragged the story to a halt. There was only so much to their lives that you could witness. Not because it was too bleak or too painful or just sad, but simply because the reverse. It numbed and blunted the emotional impact that Holdstock delivers rather well at the start. It was just too much of the same and felt like it was merely filling space.

Another weakness for me was that I felt the author was trying too hard to keep his endings as a reveal, until, well, the very end. I get this in some ways, but again it just felt like it was taking too long and was too roundabout a way of saying the same things over and over again. Because the author was too determined on that "delivery" at the end. Those emotional reveals that, for me, were too carefully managed at the sacrifice of the 'getting there' in the final third of the book.
The Casualties by Nick Holdstock is a unique, very highly recommended novel about change.

A major disaster is heading toward the Comely Bank neighborhood of Edinburgh, Scotland. It is referenced obliquely, as if it is common knowledge, because our narrator in The Casualties is telling us about the disaster from the vantage point of sixty years in the future. What he wants to talk about are some of the inhabitants of the neighborhood and tells us their stories. He is looking back and talking about the past, in 2016 and 2017, right before the apocalypse happens and everything changes.

The narrator tells us right away that Samuel Clark, who lives in Comely Bank and runs a charity used book store, is a murderer. Sam likes to collect bits of lives that have been left in the books donated to his shop, things like old letters, photos, airline ticket stubs. He also likes to hear the stories of the people around him. Holdstock introduces us, through Sam, to the denizens Sam is curious about, and those who are obsessed with him. The exceptional people we meet are Alasdair, the might-be-crazy man who lives under the bridge; Caitlyn, who works in the charity clothes shop next to the bookstore and has a face that develops cracks; Mr. Asham runs a store and longs to belong to the community; Mrs. Maclean taught for over forth years and longs to die; Rita and Sean are two drunks who always hang out together at the park; Toby is an extremely obese young man who craves food constantly so he must be supervised all the time; Sinead is a nymphomaniac who watches Toby but longs for Sam; Trudy is a Filipino prostitute.

It is a narrative with finely drawn characters that are well developed, remarkable, and interesting.

Holdstock presents his story from a unique viewpoint, which sets this pre-apocalypse story apart in a category all on its own. Even while introducing us to these characters and leading us up to the murder Sam is supposed to commit, Holdstock also drops small, vague references to the disaster that will be happening, a disaster that makes all the drama he is telling us about seem inconsequential. But that is the beauty of this novel. The narrator has a point of view from far in the future, a time years after the impending disaster and all the subsequent societal developments about which he hints. He's talking about the past many years ago. The happenings in the Edinburgh neighborhood are trivial in comparison to the bigger picture. We really don't know what the disaster is until we are far along in the story and even then he does not talk about that. He talks about this neighborhood just before the disaster.

And this choice is brilliant.

Holdstock creates a tension right away because we know something much bigger is coming but his narrator chooses to focus in on Sam and this odd, damaged group of people in this particular little neighborhood. He wants to tell us a story. It is akin to hearing about now what people were doing before boarding the Titanic, or just before the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, or the devastating Tsunami of 2004. A disaster much bigger than any little drama is coming, but the narrator needs to tell us this story, the story about what was happening just before the disaster to these people.

The ending might not suit everyone, but I could appreciate it in the context of the whole novel. This one was a nice surprise.

Disclosure My edition was courtesy of Thomas Dunne for review purposes.
I enjoyed the style of writing, but the ending was a little strange. I am still undecided.