Recommended reading #3 – ONE by Conrad Williams
I spent much of last week sitting around a swimming pool in the sun (wish I was back there now…). As well as making me realise I'm writing for the wrong market if I ever want to make serious money from books (I was the only one reading horror while a huge volume of chick-lit and formulaic pulp fiction was being continually consumed all around me), it was a great opportunity to read a few books because I wanted to, not because I'd been asked to or I'd promised to. Don't get me wrong, I'm always happy to blurb whenever I can, but there's something supremely satisfying about choosing a book from your shelf and reading it because you're in the mood to read it, no other reason.
The book at the top of my pile last week was ONE by Conrad Williams.
"This is the United Kingdom, but it's no country you know. No place you ever want to see, even in the shuttered madness of your worst dreams. But you survived. One man."
ONE blew me away. Beautifully written (I am supremely jealous of Williams' descriptive skills), it's the story of Richard Jane, a diver working on a rig in the North Sea. As Jane and his colleagues rise to the surface, dead fish and bodies sink the other way – the first indication that something terrible has happened. By the time he makes it back to dry land several days later, it's clear that the world he remembers is gone forever. The land around him is scarred beyond recognition, every living person dead. The rain burns like acid, and the sky is a constantly swirling mass of browns and reds. Bewildered and terrified, Jane has no option but to walk virtually the entire length of the devastated country back to London, back to his son.
Jane's journey is vividly described, and although the world through which he travels is filled with the dead and unending destruction, it's all conveyed in such a way as to never feel gratuitous. His quest to find his son – convinced that he's somehow survived when many millions of others have died – reaches its conclusion at the end of the first part of the novel. We then jump forward in time ten years and follow Jane through the ruins of London as he and several hundred others attempt to evade capture by the Skinners – grotesque creatures which arrived with 'the event' and which inhabit the bodies of the living and the dead. When word reaches the survivors of a huge raft being constructed off the coast of Kent, a desperate last exodus from London begins.
I don't want to say too much more about the book, other than if you have even a passing interest in post-apocalyptic fiction (and as you're on my website, that's probably a safe bet), you should read it. It ticked all my boxes, and far surpassed my expectations. Superb.
Oh, and if you're in the UK and you're interested in visiting locations which inspire people to write apocalyptic fiction, you should go to Dungeness. It's a remarkable place which totally captivated me when I visited last summer – truly like nowhere else in England. The perfect setting for the final scenes in Williams' excellent book.
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Recommended reading #3 – ONE by Conrad Williams
