What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
This topic is about
Dreams of Leaving
SOLVED: Adult Fiction
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SOLVED. Trapped in an English village. [s]
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This can't possibly be your book, but it is the plot of the (excellent) radio comedy show Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Vill...Was your book funny or scary, do you remember? I wondered about something by James Herbert. Or perhaps John Saul, but then it would be a US small town rather than an English village.
If it is in the US< then of course there is Stephen King's Under the Dome, but that is too recent.
I do indeed love Welcome to Our Village, Radio 4 comedy FTW ;-)I don't remember it being funny or scary, probably more of a drama perhaps...
Yay for a fellow Radio 4 fan! I just had a thought - was it contemporary? I think there were a few novels that dealt with villages shutting themselves off because of the plague (as indeed did happen in Eyam). Wikipedia lists the following, and A Parcel of Patterns was one that I read roughly around the time that you were loaned your novel:
Novels[edit]
God and the Wedding Dress by Marjorie Bowen, Hutchinson, 1938
A Parcel of Patterns by Jill Paton Walsh, a novel for young adults, Puffin Books, 1983
Children of Winter by Berlie Doherty, a fantasy novel for children, Methuen, 1985; adapted for television 1994
The Naming of William Rutherford by Linda Kempton, a fantasy novel for children, published by Heinemann, 1992
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, published by Fourth Estate, 2001[44]
Black Death by M. I. McAllister, children's fiction, Oxford University Press, 2003
Kiss of Death by Malcolm Rose, a thriller for young adults, published by Usborne Publishing, 2006
TSI: The Gabon Virus by Paul McCusker and Walt Larimore, M.D., Christian suspense fiction, published by Howard Books (USA), 2009
Eyam: Plague Village by David Paul, Amberley Publishing, 2012[45]
I have a sense that the occupants of the village didn't on the whole realise or acknowledge there was anything outside to be shut off from and that discovering that was part of the development, but again I can't be sure of this. Not sure why they were shut off to begin with but none of those titles is familiar.
Hmm. It sounds intriguing so I will be keeping an eye on the thread. My last thought is again not a book - it's the film The Village by M. Night Shyamalan, but that came out much later - 2004. But... looking that up (mostly, I confess, to remember how to spell his surname - it's been a while) brought up this:Plagiarism allegation[edit]
Simon & Schuster, publishers of the 1995 young adults' book Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix, claimed that the film had taken ideas from the book.[18] The book had a plot which features a village whose inhabitants are secretly forced to live in the 1830s when the year is actually 1996. The plot of Shyamalan's movie had several similarities to the book. They both involve a village, which is actually a park in the present day (Shyamalan uses a late nineteenth-century village), have young heroines on a search for medical supplies, and both have adult leaders bent on keeping the children in their village from discovering the truth. In Haddix's novel, the truth is that the village is a genetic experiment; in the movie, that the adults had decided to withdraw from the outside world.
No lawsuit was ever filed over the similarity.[19]
Neither that title nor the synopsis sounds like it, you are doing a remarkable job of trying however!
Thanks, but I'm admitting defeat for the time being! Hopefully someone else will have a lead, but if anything else does come to me I will post and see.
I don't believe so, not that I remember, did you have a book in mind?
Mod
Also sounds similar to
but that is definitely too recent. Sure will be cool I someone comes up with it.
Maybe The Midwich Cuckoos, which was made into the film Village of the Damned?In the book (haven't seen the film) there is an invisible barrier around the village and nobody can get in or out for a day. During this time all of the women in the village are impregnated and later give birth to the infamous creepy children.
Rachel wrote: "Maybe The Midwich Cuckoos, which was made into the film Village of the Damned?"No, I have the feeling that the village has been isolated for perhaps 20 years or more. I think people have grown up in the village never knowing the outside world existed. I realise that makes it sound like the planet Krikkit but that isn't it either. ;-)
Jaye wrote: "Loose Chippings 
by Thomas Wheeler ?"This isn't it but I may read it anyway. reading the synopsis for this one made me half remember things, I remember something about a police man in mine, it's so frustrating to have flashes of memory that are no help in finding the book!
Jay wrote: "Jaye wrote: "Loose Chippings by Thomas Wheeler ?"This isn't it but I may read it anyway. reading the synopsis for this one made m..."
It may be hard to find a copy of this book. I first read it when my library had it. When I went back one day to check it out again I found they had thrown it out.
It took me years to track down a copy of my own.
Maybe your library system will have a copy of it.
Jaye wrote: "It may be hard to find a copy of this book."You aren't kidding, even Amazon don't have it and they normally have everything!
Jay wrote: "Found it at last, I am almost certain it is this one...Dreams of Leaving"
wow, that one is waaay different from the one I suggested it might be!
What's the Name of That Book???
Books mentioned in this topic
Dreams of Leaving (other topics)Dreams of Leaving (other topics)
Loose Chippings (other topics)
Loose Chippings (other topics)
The Midwich Cuckoos (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Thomas Wheeler (other topics)Thomas Wheeler (other topics)
Thomas Wheeler (other topics)
I also have a feeling it is a rather popular book by a bigger author but searches have been fruitless, probably because I don't remember enough to search on!
Any suggestions appreciated.