Things
we Didn’t See Coming is a collection of nine stories with the same unnamed
central character. The stories are told in a linear order and follow the life
of the main character from his childhood to his death. The first story is set
on New Year’s Eve 1999 and subsequent stories extend fifty years into the
future. The stories are all set in an Australia suffering wild climatic swings.
The
main character is neither hero nor anti-hero. He is an everyman survivor; a
loner, not a leader. He is shown adapting to new roles and situations as the world
around him falters and transforms.
Things
We Didn’t See Coming is a perfect title for the book. When most people think of
climate change they think of prolonged drought, but in this book the climate
swings wildly, as scientists always predicted it would. Each of the nine stories
is unpredictable, but not so much in having twists at the end, more that the stories
head in unexpected directions and surprise the reader with what the characters
are actually up to.
The
book is written in a very sparse style. There is not a lot of description or
exposition. This is very much a speculative fiction piece where the reader gets
to speculate on what happened to get the main character to his current
situation.
The
novel won the 2009 Age Book of the Year. I absolutely loved it. Because of its literary nature, I
would recommend it to any reader who thinks about the future, not just those
who enjoy science-fiction.
2 comments:
I have heard of this.
Thanks Graham. It does sound good. And a good concept.
Cheers
I must get his next book, which is written the same way, a series of linear stories, and was also nominated for the Age book of the year. This one is more a literary fantasy about a family of with super powers.
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