I bought this book because it was on the reading list for book club. The back of the book, did not give much away about what the book was like; just one paragraph and some recommendations.
The front cover, has a yellow background and is warming and inviting. The paragraph on the back of the book is near the beginning of the book. At first there is mystery as to what is happening. Once it become apparent what the situation, the book was written about was; the suspense dissapaited and yet there was still 200+ pages to read. There are parts I like; glimpses of how characters, feel or what they are thinking. But in between, there feels to me to be a lot of waffle they takes some wading through take this for example:
‘It’s not a wall at all but an avalanche, a formless sprawl of matter in slow motion advance. It’s made from tendrils of Ophiocorddyceps, from billions of fungal mycelia interwoven more finely than any tapestry… ‘and so this description for another three sentences, before there is whiff of plot moving forward.
The cover of the DVD which is based on the book more accurately represents what it is about, so if you want a little more clue about whether this book is for you then take a look at that. Reading on gives far more away that is not discovered untill near the end.
SPOILERS WARNING
As it was Holocaust Memorial Day whilst I was reading this, I did ponder about the targeting of a group, because they are different.
Another day to remember the holocaust and some places dedicated to remembering (Boston, Prague, Austwich, Laxton)
In fact Melanie’s last conversation, with Sargent Parks does express that trying to cull the second generations hungeries is preventing the new normal establishing itself.
The way the 2nd generation hungaries were being tested upon, also echos how individual’s rights have been trampled on prior to the Nuremberg code of 1947 which developed into the Declaration of Helsinki in 1964 and provides ethical guidelines as to how human test subjects rights should be protected. Of course it is debatable whether, Melanie was human . Having her display mostly human characteristics rather than mutant attributes , does of course make you care about her and therefore raise questions about how she was treated. If it had been a sometype of random mutant I would have connected far less with this book, In this regards it is a clever book and the ending was rather poignant traditional type happy ending; or at least how I imagined Miss Justineau educating her new class and living happily ever after with them all looking after each other. Albeit there was just too much between the beginning and the end for me, that I just found it tedious, and whilst not hating reading it my enjoyment was limited, . Alas I’m sure I will enjoy discussing it at book club as I do appreciate that there it does have it’s merits and I expect there will be readers who connected with it more than I did.
Wonderwall 
At book club most of us were not used to reading science fiction and having to suspend disbelief, therefore we picked many holes in the logistics. It was interesting to learn that the author wrote the book and screen play simultaneously which are of course different medias and trying to do both together My have adversely affected the book.
Everyone found Dr Caudwell cold. An intriguing question that was posed is whether she would have seemed less cold if she was male. Would her focus on finding results despite it meaning killing the ‘children’ like Melanie seemed more undestandable if were not expecting rightly or wrongly that she should be displaying maternal characteristics?
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