HemGrupperDiskuteraMerTidsandan
Sök igenom hela webbplatsen
Denna webbplats använder kakor för att fungera optimalt, analysera användarbeteende och för att visa reklam (om du inte är inloggad). Genom att använda LibraryThing intygar du att du har läst och förstått våra Regler och integritetspolicy. All användning av denna webbplats lyder under dessa regler.

Resultat från Google Book Search

Klicka på en bild för att gå till Google Book Search.

Laddar...

Not Forgetting The Whale

av John Ironmonger

MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygOmnämnanden
20414131,908 (4.01)7
When a young man washes up, naked, on the sands of St Piran in Cornwall, he is quickly rescued by the villagers. From the retired village doctor and the schoolteacher, to the beachcomber and the owner of the local bar, the priest's wife and the romantic novelist, they take this lost soul into their midst. But what the villagers don't know is that Joe Haak has fled the City of London fearing a worldwide collapse of civilisation, a collapse forecast by Cassie, a computer program he designed. But is the end of the world really nigh? Can Joe convince the village to seal itself off from the outside world? And what of the whale that lurks in the bay? Intimate, funny and deeply moving, Not Forgetting the Whale is the story of a man on a journey to find a place he can call home.… (mer)
Laddar...

Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken.

Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.

» Se även 7 omnämnanden

tyska (7)  engelska (6)  franska (1)  Alla språk (14)
Visa 1-5 av 14 (nästa | visa alla)
Kurze Inhaltsangabe
Erst wird ein junger Mann angespült, und dann strandet der Wal. Die dreihundertsieben Bewohner des Fischerdorfs St. Piran spüren sofort: Hier beginnt etwas Sonderbares. Doch keiner ahnt, wie existentiell ihre Gemeinschaft bedroht ist. So wie das ganze Land. Und vielleicht die ganze Welt. Weil alles mit allem zusammenhängt. ( )
  ela82 | Mar 23, 2024 |
Ich hatte meiner Schwester das Buch ja geliehen und sie war ganz begeistert, dass es schon vor Corona so hellsichtig geschrieben wurde.
Ich kenne auch bereits Prognosen von 2012, z.B. von der "Risikoanalyse im Bevölkerungsschutz", die vor einer globalen Pandemie mit Ursprung in Asien warnen. Nun, da wir es erlebt haben, kann man fasziniert diesen Roman lesen. Die schnelle Tödlichkeit der Pandemie hat der Autor wohl überschätzt, die Solidarität der Menschen ebenso. Insgesamt ist dieses Buch über einen Mathematiker, der das Risiko für eine Pandemie erkennt und in einem kleinen Dorf landet - gemeinsam mit einem Wal - schon interessant, zum Teil auch wunderschön und fesselnd, aber stellenweise auch unausgegoren. Hundertprozentig hat es mich nicht überzeugt. Aber die Parallele zu Corona ist natürlich faszinierend. ( )
  Wassilissa | Sep 14, 2022 |
Halfway through this book I had to check the publication date to confirm that it was written in 2015 - not within the past two years. Because, you see, the plot revolves around a flu pandemic. Oh, there are plenty of other themes in the book, mostly about human nature on the personal level and the societal level. But the backdrop is a flu pandemic, in some respects like the one we've been enduring and in other respects very different.

Our hero, Joe Haak, drives as far from the London financial district as he can after a software program he designed predicts the end of the world economy, and along the way loses millions of dollars for his employer. He stops when he arrives in St. Piran, Cornwall, because, as Joe says, if he had driven any further, his tires would be wet.

The same morning Joe is found naked on the beach in St. Piran, a whale is seen in the harbor and the next day becomes stranded (temporarily) on the same beach. Joe's life becomes intertwined with the 303 residents of St. Piran, and with the whale, as influenza spreads around the globe and an oil crisis develops in the Gulf of Hormuz. Will this tiny, isolated village stay safe from the flu and be able to survive as food deliveries, power and communications cease?

The blurbs about this book consistently mention that it is positive and uplifting, and although that's not usually my genre, I was charmed by the authorial voice from the first page. Ironmonger has a gift for telling a tale, as evidenced by the opening paragraph:

"It was Charity Cloke who saw him first. She was just seventeen then, so fresh of complexion that her cheeks shone like clover honey. They would say in St. Piran that she was 'late to blossom', but a summer of soft Cornish sunshine and warm Atlantic winds had swept away any lingering trace of adolescent spots, and scowls, and rolls of baby flesh, and the girl who took to the beach with her dog on that October morning (or was it perhaps September?) was truly a girl no longer. 'Trees that are late to blossom,' Martha Fishburne would say, 'often blossom best.' And Martha was a teacher, so she would know."

It was encouraging to read of a scenario in which a pandemic comes to a full stop and people emerge enriched, better human beings than they were before. A question that flows through the book is whether people will turn vicious to protect their food or other resources, or to steal them from others. For the most part that's not the case in this book, but I have to confess that I wonder whether the same outcome could have been successfully imagined for the U.S. in 2021. The society is less homogenous than St. Piran's, and with easy access to automatic weapons, would Americans reach a tipping point so quickly that disaster would be inevitable?

That's a quibble. It's a well-written, engaging book that I can recommend to anyone who enjoys being swept up with a story. And the narration is beyond perfect, capturing the author's tone consistently. ( )
  BarbKBooks | Aug 15, 2022 |
This novel is quite different from any other dystopian novel I have ever read. My hat is off to John Ironmonger for seeing both the possibilities and frailties of technology and of people. While reading, I was immersed in the plot and characters, and swept up into what seemed like far too likely a scenario given our recent experiences with COVID and supply chain difficulties. In fact, since this book was published in 2015, before COVID reared its ugly head, I am hoping that some of the other elements at work here don’t prove to be just as true. Ah, but then there are those parts of his imagined world that we hope and pray and need to be right.

This book is packed with little wisdoms and observations, from the way shorting manipulates our stock markets and makes rich people of rash speculators and fools of solid investors, to the way every part of our world and life is connected to other, remote, pieces that we don’t even know exist. There are really not any enclaves that aren’t affected by the outside anymore.

You’re a mathematician. You know what happens to complex systems. Sudden, dramatic, catastrophic collapse.’ His words hung over the table. ‘Have you ever heard it said that our society is only three square meals away from anarchy?’

Ideas like this one seem far more likely to be true today than they did even a few years ago. We weren’t really left without any toilet paper, but it was apparent to me that almost everyone believed we could be. And, their first instinct seemed to be “as long as I have some, it doesn’t matter who else doesn’t.” Take away “toilet paper” and substitute “food” or “water” and the threat becomes frightening.

What struck me was that what happens in the entirety of this book is that people make good or bad decisions, and those decisions influence everything in life, even things that are far outside their vision.

‘Most of life,’ Jeremy would say, ‘is like driving on a motorway. We have no choice but to keep moving forward. The only control we have is over the speed of travel. But every now and then we pass an exit. We have just an instant to decide. Stay on the highway and nothing will change. Or turn off and find yourself in an unfamiliar town.

Sometimes all we can hope for is that an exit shows itself and that we have the wisdom, or just the courage, to take it.

The world has survived pandemics before, the plague, the flu epidemic of 1918. We’ve all heard about them. But whether we continue to do so might depend on us, on who we are, on how we behave.

‘It won’t be the disease that kills us. It will be the fear. In 1918 it took people a long time to understand what was going on. They still went to work. They got on with their lives. This time we’ll all be watching it on the news channels. We’ll watch the first victims die. We’ll see the bodies being buried. We’ll panic. We’ll do the thing that everyone does, we’ll look after ourselves. Our families. We’ll shut our doors and windows, we’ll keep the children inside, we’ll stay away from work, but even that won’t finish us. Not in itself. What will finish us will be the loss of just a few, a precious few, vital individuals. Critical engineers at the power stations. Truck drivers. Oil refinery workers. People who offload gas from the great tankers. If people are too sick or too scared to go to work, then collapse will follow with frightening speed.

This book left me with hope that this final quotation won’t ever prove to be the truth of who we are. Perhaps if it ever is, we will deserve the annihilation that follows.

A big thanks to Candi for putting this book on my radar. I bought it immediately, and it has taken me two years to get to it. When will I learn? ( )
  mattorsara | Aug 11, 2022 |
I got this book from the library at the end of last year and I liked it so much that I bought a copy today so I can read it again.

I chose this book primarily because it has a whale in it, and secondly because it's set in Cornwall. Thirdly, the plot sounded fun.

I loved everything about it. The plot unfolded at a great pace, Cornwall was depicted perfectly, and I loved the characters. Never has a book about the end of the world been so entertaining. Best book I have read in a long time. ( )
  Triduana | Jan 25, 2022 |
Visa 1-5 av 14 (nästa | visa alla)
inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
Du måste logga in för att ändra Allmänna fakta.
Mer hjälp finns på hjälpsidan för Allmänna fakta.
Vedertagen titel
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Originaltitel
Alternativa titlar
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Första utgivningsdatum
Personer/gestalter
Viktiga platser
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Viktiga händelser
Relaterade filmer
Motto
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
‘Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, … there is no place for industry … no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.' Thomas Hobbes — Leviathan
Dedikation
Inledande ord
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
In the village of St Piran they still speak of the day when the naked man washed up on Piran Sands.
Citat
Avslutande ord
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
(Klicka för att visa. Varning: Kan innehålla spoilers.)
Särskiljningsnotis
Förlagets redaktörer
På omslaget citeras
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Ursprungsspråk
Kanonisk DDC/MDS
Kanonisk LCC

Hänvisningar till detta verk hos externa resurser.

Wikipedia på engelska

Ingen/inga

When a young man washes up, naked, on the sands of St Piran in Cornwall, he is quickly rescued by the villagers. From the retired village doctor and the schoolteacher, to the beachcomber and the owner of the local bar, the priest's wife and the romantic novelist, they take this lost soul into their midst. But what the villagers don't know is that Joe Haak has fled the City of London fearing a worldwide collapse of civilisation, a collapse forecast by Cassie, a computer program he designed. But is the end of the world really nigh? Can Joe convince the village to seal itself off from the outside world? And what of the whale that lurks in the bay? Intimate, funny and deeply moving, Not Forgetting the Whale is the story of a man on a journey to find a place he can call home.

Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas.

Bokbeskrivning
Haiku-sammanfattning

Pågående diskussioner

Ingen/inga

Populära omslag

Snabblänkar

Betyg

Medelbetyg: (4.01)
0.5
1 1
1.5
2
2.5 1
3 11
3.5 4
4 29
4.5 9
5 14

Är det här du?

Bli LibraryThing-författare.

 

Om | Kontakt | LibraryThing.com | Sekretess/Villkor | Hjälp/Vanliga frågor | Blogg | Butik | APIs | TinyCat | Efterlämnade bibliotek | Förhandsrecensenter | Allmänna fakta | 203,222,978 böcker! | Topplisten: Alltid synlig