johnson1010 wrote:What did you think was handled well, Nora?
What do you think might have been done better?
I commented elsewhere that the first time i read through the book i was a bit lost, sometimes, when he returned to a cheracter that had already been featured earlier. It sometimes took me a bit to realize, "OH! This is that guy who fought at Yonkers!" which changed the light in which i viewed the chapter.
You mention the recognition of the few repeated characters, yes, I agree with that. I've only read it once, and I'd bet I didn't catch every repeat. Brooks could have made more of an effort to write a few throw away lines that would refresh our memory as to where that character had been. OTOH, that may have taken away from the 'reporter-like' rhythm of the piece. If Brooks wanted to maintain the rhythm, some stuff would have to have gone by the wayside. And, to me, in the end, the connectivity didn't matter. In fact, now that I think about it I believe it generated more of a One World, One Heck of a Mess feeling. No one was given a break, no country, no set of people. There was no prejudice...........the zombies killed indiscriminately. Whatever got in their way.
I liked the "newspaper report" style of the episodes....for one thing it made the reader realize that this guy survived. No mean feat! But also it allowed for a more dispassionate view of the story. Something like that could easily have become mired in too much emotional moaning and groaning. This was clean, the reader provides their own emotional effect. And our own imagination is always the most potent for ourselves.
It's been a couple of months at least since I read it, so much detail has faded and left the general ambiance of the book.
The connection I most remember, at least partially, was the brother of the man killed/lost in the Paris underground. /shiver/ And of course North Korea. /more shivering/