Friday, June 13, 2014

Grasshopper Jungle

Book Jacket for: Grasshopper jungle : a historyFor a completely different take on “the end of the world” try Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith.   Here we have the end of the world as brought about by six-foot, eternally hungry, grasshopper like things.  Our protagonists inadvertently contribute to the rise of this new apex predator and seem to be, along with a few allies, the only ones to survive their arrival.  I found the book interesting for its style which was extreme stream of consciousness mixed with a incredible willingness to let a tangent go as far as possible before reeling it back in to make a new coincidence.   The style was also INCREDIBLY repetitious, the narrator would fuss over the same facts again and again.  I almost suspect the author was trying to create a book that readers would inadvertently memorize.  While this is not a style I would revisit or want to find elsewhere it was interesting as a one-time kind of thing.

All in all this book is one I would recommend to lovers of quirky off beat books about the end of the world that fixate on the smaller details rather then the larger calamity.