Ooooo. Oral history. That sounds wonderful. I’m going to get right on that as soon as the fifteen hundred people on the library waiting list give up and go home. (I’m joking but only sort of.)

I think I am just missing out on all the murderous children media out there! Hence I’m not the best person to say whether it’s done differently here or not. It’s at least done differently than I’ve seen it done before?

(I avoid serial killers not because it’s overdone but because serial killers are real and frightening. I like ghosty horror stories but I cannot handle serial killers.)

Ooooo, that sounds interesting! Adding it to the list!

The former is way way scarier to me. By a LOT. A lot lot lot. That’s I guess why I asked the question — because I have read so few books that do it that way, and I’d like to try being scared that way again. To see if it’s too much for me across the board, or just in the one case of the Pfeffer book.

I mostly think I wouldn’t survive the apocalypse because I have no foraging skills. I’d have to find some sort of protector who was great at hunting and foraging but very superstitious and in need of frequent Tarot card readings. :p

I agree, although I think some shallow explanations hold up better than others. The Handmaid’s Tale has an explanation that I don’t think stands up to scrutiny, but it’s also got a premise that gets me where I live, so I don’t mind too much about how the premise gets arrived at. Something like Lauren Oliver’s Delirium seems…like a thing that would never, ever happen.

I think Scott Westerfield’s Uglies trilogy discussed some of what led to the dystopia, but I’m not sure it explained all of the features.

Justin Cronin’s The Passage has a first part that shows how the apocalypse got started and then it jumps forward in time to dystopia. I found it a bit disorienting.

I like what you say about the main character’s autism and how it fits in. I’m not sure if this is a book I would like because murderous children seem to be a staple now of tv shows and movies, and I’m starting to feel the concept is getting tired – kind of how I feel about serial killers too. But, The Uninvited seems like it might be a bit different in the handling of that idea, so I am intrigued.

Yes, although I would add that when an author does portray the global scale effectively, it’s damn impressive. It blows my mind when anyone’s able to do that. It’s such an undertaking.

The way Hesketh is written was, to me, the strongest part of the novel. I feel like autistic characters have been showing up all over the place recently, but I do like for an autistic character to show up and not be ALL ABOUT his/her autism.