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Far North (Paperback)

by Marcel Theroux (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber (5 Mar 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0571237770
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571237777
  • Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.2 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 21,702 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

Every day I buckle on my guns and go out to patrol this dingy city. Out on the far northern border of a failed state, Makepeace patrols the ruins of a dying city and tries to keep its unruly inhabitants in check. Into this cold, isolated world comes evidence that life is flourishing elsewhere - a refugee from the vast emptiness of forest, whose existence inspires Makepeace to take to the road to reconnect with human society. What Makepeace finds is a world unravelling, stockaded villages enforcing a rough and uncertain justice, mysterious slave camps labouring to harness the little understood technologies of a vanished civilization.But Makepeace's journey also leads to unexpected human contact, tenderness, and the dark secrets behind this frozen world. "Far North" leads the reader on a quest through an unforgettable arctic landscape, from humanity's origins to its likely end. Bleak, haunting, spare - and yet ultimately hopeful, the novel is suffused with an ecstatic awareness of the world's fragility and beauty, and its unexpected ability to recover from our worst trespasses.

About the Author

Marcel Theroux is the author of three previous novels, A Blow to the Heart, A Stranger in the Earth, and The Paperchase, winner of the 2002 Somerset Maugham Award. He lives in London.
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Customer Reviews

47 Reviews
5 star:
 (10)
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 (26)
3 star:
 (10)
2 star:
 (1)
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (47 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars It's Grim Up Far North, 9 Mar 2009
By Steerforth (Sussex) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)      
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Marcel Theroux's 'Far North' is a post-apocalyptic novel that will appeal to anyone who has enjoyed Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road', John Wyndham's 'Chrysalids' or Margaret Atwood's 'Oryx and Crake'.

Set in Siberia in the not-too-distant future, 'Far North' depicts the plight of a character called Makepeace to survive in a world in which cities have been abandoned, food is scarce and law and order has collapsed. Theroux's vision is a pretty bleak one, but it is not relentlessly grim like Cormac Mccarthy's masterpiece.

The central question in 'Far North' is 'What is it to be human?'. What do we become when the veneer of civilisation is stripped away and we are forced to compete with strangers for the meagre resources that remain?

In 'Far North', Marcel Theroux has created a vivid and chillingly plausible vision of the future that becomes more compelling with each chapter. He also manages to tease the reader, tempting us to jump to false conclusions before revealing the truth later on.

Highly recommended.
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Morality in the time of Climate Collapse, 28 Feb 2009
By Nigel Seel (Andover, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
The future as imagined by James Lovelock. The great heat has come and global civilisation has crashed. The utopian-religious back-to-nature settlements in the Siberian arctic, the setting of this novel, were over-run by refugees from the south, followed by arctic winter depopulation. The protagonist, Makepeace, guards a frozen, deserted town with guns at the ready.

This novel explores a journey across the continent which encompasses pitiless ethnic tribes, slavers, labour camps and a general assortment of intrinsically unpleasant characters and decent people gone bad. The character of Makepeace is the moral centre of this story, but morality has been reduced to the correct choice of tough, lethal decisions.

The book held my attention all the way through, while not being quite a page-turner. If the author's targets were the general nastiness of the human condition without the framework of a functioning state, and the bankruptcy of pacifistic religions, then I think we can agree that the case here is closed. But these are not difficult targets.

My other quibble - it is no more than that - is that the plotting seems to depend on too many unlikely events: suspension of disbelief did waver a few times.

In summary, I think Far North is fine as a library book, but I'm not sure I'd recommend buying it.
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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars dystopian novel, 4 April 2009
By kehs (Hertfordshire, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This was an extremely thought provoking read. It made me wonder just what lengths I would go to in order to survive in a world that was self-destructing, or would I choose to end my life after losing all my loved ones. I found myself questioning how charitable we would all be to each other and whether we really would resort to savagery as depicted in this book. The chilling prospect that the events in Far North could maybe become reality for us all one day filled me with horror, as Theroux's excellent writing skills made it sound all too possible. This is a story that is unremitting in its telling, with twists, surprises and horrors on every page. Theroux's book is a bleak tale, but compelling nonetheless. He has written in a captivating style and drew me in from the opening pages. Highly recommended for lovers of dystopian novels.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Its grim up North...
To say this novel is a slow burner is an understatement. Key facts about the main character, the back story for the setting, and the motives of secondary characters are drip fed... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Ash

3.0 out of 5 stars Stark post apocalypse scifi
Far North is good, but not brilliant. Set in a future Siberia warmed and then cooled by man-made climate change, it details how society could crumble in the face of food... Read more
Published 7 months ago by R. M. Lindley

5.0 out of 5 stars Very enjoyable action adventure
I very much enjoyed reading this book and actually thought I'd already reveiwed it ages ago.

Set in a post apocalyptic world the book features the adventures of... Read more
Published 7 months ago by M. A. Kelly

4.0 out of 5 stars Far North by Marcel Theroux
This book is quite difficult to review. It is part adventure story, part social commentary. Taking place in Northern Siberia, it tells the story of isolationism, a desire to... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Victoria

4.0 out of 5 stars Unusual novel set in a not too distant future
I imagined this novel would be something along the lines of a science fiction, human, version of The Call of the Wild (Puffin Classics); perhaps with a touch of Blade Runner: The... Read more
Published 8 months ago by C. Foster

4.0 out of 5 stars Stoic
This novel sticks in the mind a long time. I don't think I've ever read about a protagonist as stoic and uncomplaining as Makepeace, and ultimately it's the unfolding description... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Andy Smith

4.0 out of 5 stars A classic Theroux novel
A bleak tale of a post-apolcalyptic world which has drawn comparison with McCarthy's 'The Road' but for me draws a dotted line to Theroux's father's 'O zone'. Read more
Published 9 months ago by A. Betts

4.0 out of 5 stars Snow Fall
I have read a couple of other books by Marcel Theroux - enjoyed them both.

He isn't afraid of tacking different genres and this post-Apocalyptic novel is another... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Dr. Robert A. Josey

3.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking
Dystopian certainly. A post-apocalyptic world where society has broken down and the few remaining are living as slaves, in odd extremist communities or as mavericks on their... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mrs. PJ Taylor

5.0 out of 5 stars Cracking
Evoking at times the love of nature and wilderness at its starkest and most challenging as seen in the writing of Jack London, and the grinding minutiae of surviving in a world... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr. A. R. Cotgrove

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