Due Preparations For The Plague (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
this book plain blew me out of the water. i must say that i listened to it, and that i just discovered the pleasures of listening to audiobooks, something i previously considered anathema. i am a slow reader and i like savoring sentences and reading them over and over. so it was a while before i found the right book to listen to, and this one was great because the reader reads slowly and doesn't do too much silliness with the voices (though i had to wonder why they picked a male reader for a book written by a woman; not to be stickler about this, but when i read a book and i know that a woman wrote it, i sort of hear a female voice rather than a male voice, in my head).the first thing that attracted me to this book is the awesomeness of the title. the title was first used in dead earnestness and literality by Daniel Defoe in his Due Preparations For The Plague, As Well For Soul As Body. published in 2003, hospital's book seems to me a deep, if off-center, analysis of 9/11, terror, and the implications and socio-political fabric of terrorism. i use "terror" here not as the current shorthand for "terrorist nefariousness" but as terror proper, that terrible feeling of overwhelming dread that makes us loose our bowels and go cold and dead with horror. what hospital does here, she follows a bunch of young-ish folks who were the kids who were let out of a (fictional) hijacked plane in the 80s. the story is set in the year 2000. islamist groups are involved, and their final ending up in afghanistan (this is not a spoiler) obviously hints at a world of meaning-making and signification.these kids, let out of the plane in paris or another european city (i should remember but don't; copenhagen?) before the plane's final disastrous journey to destruction and universal death, were filmed by countless cameras as they slid, distressed, terrified, and tearful, down an emergency chute, so the book is intensely visual, and images of this or that kid return almost obsessively. the visuality of the book is haunting and speaks of a large system of surveillance and observation all too familiar to 2013 readers. the story is the kids', now adults', obsessive reconstruction of what really happened. in this respect, this is an enormously gripping spy story. the details are engaging and engagingly told, the story is taut and expert, and the author keeps us guessing till the very end. but what strikes most is the trauma of the children, whose lives are all by hanging by a thread. they have created a website for kid survivors of the hijacking and are constantly forming connections with people and pouring over heavily redacted documents obtained through FOIA (remember that?) to find the truth. the novel moves back and forth in time, very effectively, and a lot of it takes place in paris, from which the ill-fated flight departed. the pain of the children is visceral. two of them, samantha and jacob, are literally tortured by the events. another adult who was also a child at a time and lost his mother (though he himself was not on the plane), lowell, is the third protagonist and his life is in shambles. the memories won't leave these people alone. sam, in particular, is very angry at the aunt who adopted her after her parents and her little brother died on the flight, and the relationship between the two women is, well, fantastically described, a great portrayal of tortured but (surprisingly) steady, safe, and tender love. as the process of discovery proceeds and the picture is assembled, there is a palpable emotional crescendo, which culminates in the final section. this final section is worth the whole book alone. god. it is amazing. and unfortunately there is nothing i can tell you without giving it all away. but let me say this: if this were the only literary description of the sheer awesomeness of people, of the lovingness that prevails in the face of the most ruthless evil, it would be enough to make us believe.
Due Preparations for the Plague by Janette Turner Hospital focuses on characters that all have one thing in common: they all have some connection to a plane that was hijacked by terrorists thirteen years earlier. When he was sixteen, Lowell's mother was on the flight and killed during the hijacking. Lowell's life is still tormented by her death. Samantha is a survivor. She was a six year old child and allowed off the plane. She is searching declassified documents connected with the hijacking and trying to discover the identity of a shadowy agent called Salamander. Additionally, it seems that all those connected with the hijacking are dying mysterious deaths. After Lowell's father dies and leaves him a bag filled with documents and tapes about the hijacking, he and Samantha team up.This is a psychological thriller that deals with terrorism and espionage. It will play on your emotions as it tells a tale of deceit and deception and how one man's duplicity affects the lives of many. The story switches narrators and points-of-view, drawing out surprising connections between the people involved and offering the reader more insight into the whole terrifying event.Certainly recent events give Due Preparations for the Plague a poignancy and timelessness that bodes well for the lasting impact it has on the reader. It could be a real story. The paranoia running rampant through the characters could be a legitimate feeling that they should be paying attention to. Today we know there are terrorists, unethical political maneuvers, humans used as collateral, and chemical warfare. Due Preparations for the Plague also deals with the psychological destruction of personal loss and death. As the overleaf quote, from Daniel Defoe's Due Preparations For the Plague says: "I have often asked myself what I mean by preparations for the plague... and I think that preparations for the plague are preparations for death. But what is it to make preparations for death? or what preparations are proper to be made for death?" Exactly what preparations can you make for your own death that are truly beneficial and not simply reactions to the obvious? What risks must be taken? What must we be willing to leave behind?Due Preparations For the Plague is a beautifully written literary novel with sharp characterizations. Every little detail is also well researched and woven seamlessly into the plot. The different narrators are fully formed and developed characters; each of them has a distinct and individual voice. While this is a political thriller that requires some effort and concentration to read, in the end you will feel your time was well spent. "To state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise." Albert Camus, The PlagueVery Highly Recommended; http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
What do You think about Due Preparations For The Plague (2015)?
Interesting premise, which I won't reveal, but let's just say if you are a conspiracy theorist and think the moon landing was a hoax, then you may be interested in this book.A plane is hijacked in the mid 80s and the only survivors are the children who were released prior to the fatal explosion. Fast forward 13 years and this group of children are now young adults, trying to live their lives with not only the memory of watching the plane blow up, but also with the emotions that go along with being a survivor (i.e. guilt, anger, depression, etc). Several of the survivors have died under suspicious circumstances and it all comes to a head when the father (who was not on the plane) of one of the children dies and leaves behind a locker key. The survivor chapters are in the third person, while the others (unmentionable so as not to give out spoilers) are in the first person. The whole plausibility of the plot is suspect in my mind (but you never know...), and the contrived nature of some of the chapters on chemical warfare (I'm sure they were accurate, but they felt forced and unnatural) and terrorist cells/conversations/psychology took me out of the book and into disbelief mode. Another case of a book, I think, that needs a thick red pen for editing. That said, "last words" mini chapters were engaging and tragic.The biggest bummer was the ending, when the last tidbit is revealed - the Oprah moment. Surprising that a storyline can go from a hijacking to a plot that comes straight out of "The Bold and the Beautiful."
—Stephanie
I don't often read thrillers, but I was drawn to this because of the title. And I suppose it's not the usual churn-it-out formulaic thriller, but one with some literary pedigree. It was a completely absorbing novel about terrorism and, indeed, about terror: the terror of losing what we value or of being what we cannot value. Hospital winched the tension tight and crafted sensitive, believable characters. The scenes of terror and the aftermath of those left behind are rendered with breathtaking authenticity. The ending was not as profound as I might have wished, though it made sense in the context of the characters. Still, the novel gestures at the newspapers on one hand and at Camus on the other, and is a thoughtful exploration of how far we'll go to maintain "security" in both the personal and political sense. At work, I would sometimes sit in meetings, aware of this novel in my bag, barely able to keep myself from stepping out on some excuse to read a little.
—kp
I don't have a category for this one. Thriller? Oh, yes. Terrorists? Yes. CIA? Named, but not specified, though obviously yes, again. Survivors? Oh, yeah. Obsession? That, too. Denial? Yes, of course. All these elements are here, yet it isn't really about any of of these, per se. It's about people, relationships, and getting through/past a horrific event; some do, some don't. It's all very complicated. The characters are richly drawn. Be aware that once you begin, the book will not let you put it down.
—L
