Andrew Peckham

Intriguing premise, poorly executed, flat ending. I like Crouch, his style is fast paced and cinematic. Fleshing out small worlds impacted by big events, giving us everyday characters dealing with extreme situations. I prefer his later novels where his "big events" seem more inventive and better fleshed out, but that's not the fatal flaw in this story. Character development is lacking, the plot is driven too often by circumstances and coincidence rather than character choices, and the ending is train wreck. I've heard people say this book was self published and that just let so many pieces fall into place. There is no publishing house that would allow a story to wrap up like this. Honestly I don't think my yr 10 English teacher would have accepted this ending. It smacks of an author frustrated by a story based on a single good idea that burst out of the gates with speed and passion at the start, but just lost direction, and quickly he found himself unsure how to get out of the corner he'd painted himself into. Through the entire novel we're driven to keep reading by the mystery of the "big event" wanting to know what it was, why it created it's effect, and maybe what that says about human nature. That's NEVER answered. The Deus Ex Machina ending is NEVER explained. The larger scale fallout and recovery from the event is NEVER explored. The philosophical ramifications are NEVER investigated. In the end Crouch only seemed interested in driving home a single idea of mourning what modernity has wrought on the family unit, and pining for simpler times. Extremely let down by the ending, I can't recommend this to anyone. But I hasten to add he does get better as an author with later releases.