Four simultaneous plane crashes.
Three child survivors.
A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse.
What if he's right?
I’m a sucker for a good epistolary novel, especially when
it’s done well, and Sarah Lotz did it very well.
Structured as a book within a book with multiple voices and
viewpoints, this collection of “real world documents” details the aftermath of
four mysterious plane crashes and the three (or is it four?) children who
survive them. Rumors of that fourth survivor fuel a growing religious movement
convinced the children are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Absurd, right?
Except the children who survived the ill-fated flights
aren't the same children who boarded them.
Despite the creepy-as-hell premise, this book is less about
the three survivors and more about the public perception of children lauded at
first as miracles, then harassed as harbingers of the world’s end. I won’t bore
you with all the characters and storylines because it’s too easy for a review
of that sort to lead to spoilers. You can check out the plot synopsis over on
her website: I’d prefer to talk about what you, the
reader, will get out of your time spent with this book.
If there’s an
underlying theme in this novel that stood out to me, it’s one of “searching.” While
the rest of the world searches for an explanation--a mechanical or religious
reason for the simultaneous crashes—the book’s characters search for their own
meanings and their own places in the mysterious post-disaster reality they’re
thrown into. Ultimately the reader is
also left to search for his or her own meaning of both “The Three” and the book
The Three. I like this kind of indeterminacy. I like open endings. I like books
where there are no answers at the end, and where the conclusion isn’t wrapped
up neatly with a bow and gift card. I like books that demand a second reading. If
you don’t, this is probably not the book for you.
I think of this book as more of a “literary” horror novel,
rather than the plot-driven kind of thriller that calls to mind a 90-minute
movie. There’s an eerie “found footage”
feel to the book-inside-a-book, and the story itself is fast-paced and
engaging. There are some incredibly visual scenes in the beautifully tragic
“suicide forest” in Japan, a repeated motif of people unable to speak their own
thoughts without going through intermediaries, a wonderful buildup of tension
as the family members discover who the returned children turn out to be, the
overall mystery of both the nature and existence of the “fourth” child, and an
open ending that allows equally for both questions and closure.
Although this was a summer read for me, it’s exactly the
kind of book that these rainy and chilly October evenings demand. Grab a cup of
steaming coffee, settle into your favorite chair, arrange the blanket around
your legs and enjoy.
