…because I picked up Justin Cronin’s The Passage. When both Joe and Maggie recommend a book this strongly, you can be confident there’s something there worth reading. I had a few other books stacked up on the nightstand, but after reading nearly 300 pages in the first 3 evenings I realized that this wasn’t a book that would share my reading time politely — it required my full attention. There’s a fantastic quality to the story that reminds me of Michael Crichton’s writing — the sense that the characters are truly overwhelmed by their plight, and the story builds with such unrelenting pace that it’s nearly impossible to find the page you are willing to stop on.
Books like these can be difficult to explain — it’s unfair to say that it’s sci-fi, or a thriller, or a literary novel, or any single genre. To do so immediately limits what the author is trying to do. I thought for a while last night about how I could summarize this book, in one sentence, if I had to, especially with other literary references (because that’s often the easiest way to explain a book)…and this is what I came up with:
It’s Cormac McCarthy’s The Road crossed with Max Brook’s World War Z.
That’s it.
Okay, that doesn’t really cover all of it, but that’s the best I’ve got. Just know that if you start it, it’s going to get under your skin like a virus.
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