Björn recenserade Nation av Terry Pratchett
None
4 stjärnor
Not sure why I put this one off after buying it. Maybe the cover, which screams "kids' book" rather than "ambitious young adult"; maybe the Lyn Pratchett co-credit, maybe simply the fact that it's not Discworld. When I do pick it up, it sticks to my hands.
Nation is a delightful book, but not one of delights. No points for guessing the event that inspired it in 2004, I guess: it begins with a tsunami raging across the ocean, laying waste to the tiny islands of the ... Well, not the South Pacific, because the world is ever so slightly different here, but it might as well be. At first, there only seems to be two survivors: A young native boy, who only survived because he was away on his initiation rite to become a man and now never can, and a young English girl whose ship is smashed on …
Not sure why I put this one off after buying it. Maybe the cover, which screams "kids' book" rather than "ambitious young adult"; maybe the Lyn Pratchett co-credit, maybe simply the fact that it's not Discworld. When I do pick it up, it sticks to my hands.
Nation is a delightful book, but not one of delights. No points for guessing the event that inspired it in 2004, I guess: it begins with a tsunami raging across the ocean, laying waste to the tiny islands of the ... Well, not the South Pacific, because the world is ever so slightly different here, but it might as well be. At first, there only seems to be two survivors: A young native boy, who only survived because he was away on his initiation rite to become a man and now never can, and a young English girl whose ship is smashed on his island, and as far as they know they're the only people alive within thousands of miles. So basically Robinson Crusoe/Blue Lagoon with funny footnotes about tree-dwelling octopodes, right?
Except Pratchett(s) wants to do more. The real starting point is this: Mau, just returned to the island that's the only home he's ever known to find his village smashed, his family gone, corpses strewn in the treetops, the gods he's always been taught watch over his island scattered... and once he's buried them all, when he sits in his ruined civilization with only the ghosts of his ancestors screaming at him to fix things, he starts asking WHY? WHAT THE HELL? HOW? WHERE? Basically, if Pratchett didn't seem like such a nice guy, I'd say this was him telling Philip Pullman that anything you can do, I can do better, and doing it effortlessly.
Nation is both one of the emotionally rawest - the first three chapters are nothing short of horrifying, and nothing gets healed easily - and intellectually ambitious Pratchett books I've read. From a shattered world, he gives his young protagonists a chance to build a world anew, question aspects of faith, class, gender, science, language... and he does it well. Sure, it gets a little preachy towards the end, and he necessarily oversimplifies some aspects, but for the most part it's a beautiful melding of love story, creation myth, and call for sanity. A novel about questions that refuses to accept simple answers.
“I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, agreement or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no 'should.'”
"Does NOT happen!"