Michael Griffin (4)
Autor de The Lure of Devouring Light
Para otros autores llamados Michael Griffin, ver la página de desambiguación.
Obras de Michael Griffin
An Ideal Retreat 1 copia
Obras relacionadas
The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron (1800) — Contribuidor — 74 copias
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Género
- male
- Lugares de residencia
- Portland, Oregon, USA
Miembros
Reseñas
Premios
También Puede Gustarte
Autores relacionados
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 5
- También por
- 13
- Miembros
- 68
- Popularidad
- #253,411
- Valoración
- 4.0
- Reseñas
- 4
- ISBNs
- 50
- Idiomas
- 2
Are these four characters the last survivors of some apocalyptic disaster? Are they human guinea pigs in a strange experiment? They don’t know and we don’t know either. Mark – from whose perspective we seem to see things – suffers from strange memory gaps, perhaps induced by the medication. There are glimpses of hazy memories, hints suggesting a very different past. The quartet explore the levels of the bunker, trying to understand their situation and to possibly find a means of escape. We look on, as lost and perplexed as they are.
At first, this book reads like a literary equivalent of the “Big Brother” reality show. In close, enforced confinement, tempers fray, tensions simmer, occasionally overstepping into violence. Friendships are made and unmade, desire waxes and wanes. As the novella progresses, however, we realise that the claustrophobic horror portrayed does not exist merely an individual level, but also on a cosmic one. Tellingly, Griffin slips in references to Norse sagas. Whilst these mythical undertones initially seem out of place in a sci-fi scenario, they suggest that Armageddon House should be read as an existential fable, possibly representing our constant struggle to understand the human predicament – Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Whether the book works for you or not depends, of course, on what scale of “weird” you like your “fiction” to be. In some ways, Griffin’s novella reminded me of I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. I feel that, like Harpman’s book, Armageddon House is a “novel(la) as thought experiment”. Narratively, it leaves too many questions unanswered. I find this frustrating but other readers, of course, might not – some might even delight in the ambiguities. Beyond the bare bones of the plot, however, the novella raises haunting, philosophical questions which cannot be easily dismissed and this is where its strength lies.
3.5*
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