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Feb 2015
12:56pm, 27 Feb 2015
4,306 posts
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LindsD
This is the discussion thread for the March Book Group book, Then, by Julie Myerson. Please don't read the thread if you don't want any spoilers. If you've finished the book or don't care, dive in!
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Feb 2015
12:59pm, 27 Feb 2015
14,760 posts
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McGoohan
I'm about 2/3 through now and I think I've guessed what's going on. Then again, reading the blurbs on the back have helped spoil that a bit. Grrr.
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Feb 2015
1:05pm, 27 Feb 2015
4,309 posts
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LindsD
That's annoying. I have to say I still didn't really know what was going on entirely after I'd finished, but I can guess what you've guessed, iyswim.
Have you got the really harrowing bit, yet?
And how do you find the narrative style? I found it like being drunk, which as I'd just given up drinking when I read it, was most disturbing. But in a way that I found challenging, not in a way that made me feel like I didn't like the book.
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Feb 2015
1:06pm, 27 Feb 2015
4,310 posts
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LindsD
(not sure how that rogue comma got in....)
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Feb 2015
10:19am, 28 Feb 2015
14,790 posts
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McGoohan
SPOILERS AHOY!
It's quite strange to come to this directly after Elizabeth Is Missing which - as the narrator has Alzheimers - also has them forgetting what they said a page back.
On the face of it, the setting seems to be post Nuclear Holocaust with doomed and starving survivors living through a nuclear winter. However, having read the blurbs on the back it's pretty clear something else is going on. As I'm 2/3 through I'm not sure whether the nuclear war is real or not. It might be purely allegorical.
I suspect the harrowing thing is that the narrator didn't just home abort the baby but killed all her children. I wait to see if this was because of impending war, madness or if she's just pictured the war as an escape from what she did.
Overall the book is like a collision of Cormac MCCarthy's The Road and Emma Healey's Elizabeth Is Missing.
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Feb 2015
11:23am, 28 Feb 2015
14,791 posts
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McGoohan
OK, one chapter to go. Looks like the narrator had the baby at home *while* the nukes were going off. Still unsure how much is real/unreal.
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Mar 2015
10:05am, 1 Mar 2015
4,317 posts
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LindsD
Yes am waiting for you to finish...... because, as I said, having finished, I'm still not sure. Really looking forward to hearing what you think. Haven't started my re-read yet.
Did you guess that she killed all her children before we find out? I really didn't. I did kind of guess that Matt was dead.
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Mar 2015
10:09am, 1 Mar 2015
14,802 posts
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McGoohan
I have finished. (Finished last night but was knackered so went to bed.)
I'm off out for the day now, so I'll keep you on tenterhooks a bit longer 
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Mar 2015
8:23pm, 3 Mar 2015
12,527 posts
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Yorkshire Pie
I have also finished but still trying to digest it a bit more. I also finished feeling unsure as to whqt had happened and where the line between real/imagined was.
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Mar 2015
1:10pm, 4 Mar 2015
4,320 posts
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LindsD
I've had no broadband since Sunday..... but I'm back now. I'm going to pick up my copy from the library tomorrow and re-read. Looking forward to hearing your views.
YP, that's how I felt, so I'm interested in what others think. And how I feel after a re-read.
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