Archive for the ‘Alternate History’ Category

LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson’s first novel, SCENES AT THE MUSEUM, began with two words: “I exist!” This one says, “I exist! I exist again! And again!” LIFE AFTER LIFE is a marvel. It’s one of the most inventive novels I’ve ever read, rich with details, beautifully crafted, and filled with metaphysical questions about the nature of time, reality, and the ability of one person to make a dramatic difference based on one small twist of fate. In short, it’s amazing.

January 8, 2014 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: 2013 Favorites, 2013 Man Booker Shortlist, Alternate History, Costa Award (Whitbread), Facing History, Literary, Reading Guide, Unique Narrative, y Award Winning Author

11/22/63: A NOVEL by Stephen King

Dedicated Stephen King fans are in for an epic treat—an odyssey, a Fool’s journey, an adventure with romance. A genre-bending historical novel with moral implications, this story combines echoes of Homer, H.G. Wells, Don Quixote, Quantum Leap (the old TV show), Jack Finney’s TIME AND AGAIN, and even a spoonful of meta-King himself, the czar of popular fiction.

November 8, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Alternate History, Facing History, Speculative (Beyond Reality), Texas, y Award Winning Author

CAIN by Jose Saramago

Saramago’s last, indeed posthumous, book is a real treat. Brief, inventive, funny, it furthers the author’s well-known distaste for religious dogma by traversing many of the familiar stories of the Old Testament by means of a fanciful parable told from a rational point of view. Much like The Elephant’s Journey, it shows Saramago’s stylistic fingerprints in relaxed form.

October 4, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: Allegory/Fable, Alternate History, Humorous, Satire, Translated, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

THE LEFTOVERS by Tom Perrotta

On May 21 this year, many Christians waited for an event, the Rapture, which was to physically transport them to their savior, Jesus Christ. Spurred on by a minister in California, Harold Camping, many were disappointed when the event they were confident was to happen, just never came to pass.

In his new book, author Tom Perrotta explores the what-ifs of what eventually turned out to be a non-event. What if an event like the Rapture did happen? What happens to the people who get left behind, the Leftovers? If Perrotta’s vision were to come true, most of the people who get left behind resort to their own special brand of religious fanaticism.

August 30, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags:  Â· Posted in: Alternate History, Contemporary

THE ASTOUNDING, THE AMAZING, THE UNKNOWN by Paul Malmont

THE ASTOUNDING, THE AMAZING, THE UNKNOWN by Paul Malmont is a celebration of science fiction’s golden years via the pulp magazine ethos. Taking place in 1943, it recounts a story partially based in fact about how the guiding lights of science fiction’s heyday were brought together by the military and tasked with making science fiction real in order to defeat the Nazis. Virtually all the authors who were the mainstays of science fiction and fantasy from 1930’s through the 1960’s are there.

July 22, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Alternate History, Facing History, Mystery/Suspense, Speculative (Beyond Reality)

THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR by Arthur Phillips

The very first thing I did after finishing The Tragedy of Author – Arthur Phillips’s ingenious faux-memoir – was to Google to see what was true and what wasn’t…only to find that much of Phillips’s traceable past has been erased.

Did he really have a gay twin sister named Dana, a scam artist father who spent his adult life in prison, a Czech wife and twin sons of his own? Methinks not. What I do know is that Arthur Phillips shares his birthday with the Bard himself, that he was born in Minnesota, and that he is indeed a writer to be watched very carefully. Because what he’s accomplished in this novel – er, memoir – is sheer genius.

June 24, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Alternate History, Contemporary