Tag: Published 2008

11:21 PM 29 AUGUST 2016

I read this with my teenage son and it says much for the late Pratchett’s ability to speak to a broad audience that this story was immediately hailed as “the best book ever….well so far”. So what was it that resonated so notably with that most challenging of all readers – the adolescent male? Clearly a pacy storyline helps, but the Pratchett brand of humour effortlessly underpinned some complex concepts and successfully held the readers attention, able to empathise with a choice of hero/heroines.

The novel centres on the story of two survivors – ‘Mau’, an islander undergoing a right of passage to manhood, interrupted by a cataclysmic tsunami, which destroys his society and ‘Daphne’, whose boat, borne on the same monstrous wave, crash lands in the rainforest. With echoes of Tarzan meets Jane, Pratchett compares and contrasts the disparate cultures and beliefs upon which Mao and Daphne’s respective views of the world are founded and blends their different knowledge and skills to combat their vulnerability and attendant dangers. It’s a thrilling adventure. Babies to be birthed, raiders to be repelled, food to be chewed for the toothless. Indeed, part of the book’s appeal is possibly this Dahl-esque indulgence in the unexpected, the violent, the gross. But, it is also touching in parts and even the burgeoning relationship between the two main characters was tolerated in all its subtle sensitivity.

In many ways this is a ‘right of passage’ book and the emergence of the two young adults, stepping out into their prescribed futures, forever bonded by their experience, is quite uplifting.

The idea that, on this small island at least, it might be possible to erase a history and start again, or perhaps we are each a summary of our preceding generations, so that we are rarely a blank canvas. Certainly the encroachment of the ‘outside’ world into an isolated island community must change it forever, if not for the better, but individual contributions do matter.

Helpfully, in his ‘Author’s Note’, Pratchett plays the “great big multiple universes get-out-of-jail-free card”, to explain any anomalies in the plot. And about ‘Thinking’, he also belatedly warns the reader that “this book contains some”!

It is perhaps a measure of the writer that though aimed at the ‘young adult’ reader, ‘Nation’ has much to commend it to a wider audience. Leastways, son and I are committed to further exploration of TP’s lengthy book list. Bring it on!