A controversial choice and a divided table: Eamonn loved this book; Nathalie appreciated it; Gill and Nic loathed it passionately; as I recall Jane disliked it.
Possibly the stark, deconstructed writing - "sentences" weren't sentences but phrases or words separated by inappropriate full stops; lacking cohesion and structure and having, usually, either subject or predicate but rarely both - reflected the apocalyptic breakdown of society but mostly it smacked of illiteracy.
There were occasional, breath-taking portraits of degradation and desperation - the farm of humans in the cellar, kept alive to provide meat being an obvious example - but mostly the characters were unappealing and so slightly sketched that it was hard to know them and, therefore, to empathise.
We knew the mother had committed suicide and the father hadn't and had undertaken the care and upbringing of his child alone but throughout the whole novel we learned nothing more of him than that he loved his child and had taken that decision. (Except that he had an uncanny ability to find barely hidden cellars full of food that had gone undiscovered by the other desperate survivors who had passed by previously. Perhaps he had a great sense of smell?)
We have no reason to think the mother didn't love her child but she reached a different decision. Presumably this made the father morally more commendable but, really, to what purpose and why? What was the value in the life he and the boy led while we followed and, if the devastation was so wide spread as it appeared and danger so omnipresent, what value would there ever be?
I'm not sure the mother was wrong.
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