Book 3 The Last Conversation

 

The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay fulfills the category “Shortest Book in my TBR List” for the PopSugar 2021 Reading Challenge. It is fifty-five pages. I listened to the audio version, which was one hour and forty-five minutes. It is not the shortest on my list.

Confession time.

I panicked for this post. I read half of two different books for this week’s blog. One was flat out boring, and in the other, I couldn’t find one character I liked. I also read a much-hyped romance story, but it left me wanting. I didn’t wish to air my feelings on the blog. So…I had to go for the shortest book prompt.

 I read four titles for the category—Brokeback Mountain (64 pages), The Year of Magical Thinking (accidentally got the abridged at 1.75 hours audio), The Last Conversation, and ’Til Morning’s Light (only available in audio, 35 minutes). Only one worked for the blog. I loved Brokeback, but what else can you say about it? And the second one, I could not connect. That may have been the reader or a poor abridgment. (Note: I NEVER read abridged items. I grabbed this title for free on Audible and didn’t read the fine print.) The third I discovered was a prelude to a video game. How cool is that! I might use it for the “different format” prompt. I also started The Left Hand of Darkness, a BBC radio dramatization, which could also work for both categories. My point is, I scrambled for something this week.

Sorry that this post is a mess.

Anyway…

The Last Conversation is part of the Forward Collection. It is a series of six novellas written by some of today’s best writers. Author Blake Crouch contemplated today’s rapidly advancing technology. With this idea, he challenged fellow authors to write about a “pivotal technological moment” that would change the world and the repercussions of that innovation. Paul Tremblay, Andy Weir, Amor Towles, and Veronica Roth are among those who took up the challenge. The two I’ve read from the collection are pure Black Mirror.

Without giving the entire plot of this short novel, our protagonist wakes blind into a world he doesn’t understand. He’s in pain and confused. A single human voice is his light in the darkness as he recovers and learns about what he’s woken into. Mr. Tremblay makes a new twist on pandemic fiction. (Yes, there’s killing disease, but the story is set in the aftermath.) We only see our hero’s point of view, and half the passages are in second person. That’s right. The author addresses the reader as You. “Your room is dark. You cannot see anything.” What a way to start! What a way to write! No one does second person pov. But in doing so, Mr. Tremblay invites the reader into the protagonist’s head on a deep level. From the start, we need to know who “we” are and what’s going on. And for me, it doesn’t hurt the novella starts with a very Zork line. (Some of you will get that.)

Long and short: Interesting story, interesting collection, great authors

I give The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay Four Little Brown Houses.