This Is Not A Book

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In Countermanded someone receives a chilling message from the spirit world, and the unexpected ability to find humor in it. And I'm so okay with that. I mean, to be frank, I'm not into zombies. Like, at all. Usually, they never manage to :

A śka is an energetic visual storyteller and a science communicator who is a passionate advocate of visual literacy. She has illustrated ten published books, makes comics, and is a regular contributor to The School Magazine and other children’s publications. Her other books include The Incurable Imagination and My Storee, both published by EK Books. This book is a snapshot into suffering and despair and humanity and it’s one that’s blown up to such high-definition that it’s difficult to stomach because it’s honest and it’s brutal and it’s real and it’s so intense in its depiction of unbearable human emotions that you just want to gnaw on a pillow and curl up in the foetal position.Jean Jullien engages kids' imaginations in absorbing style, asking them to suspend their assumptions about for and play with the conventions of the book in their hands ... Very enjoyable indeed.' – Absolutely Mama i don't think i was told how gut-wrenching this book would be. so i have to tell you. you will cry. or come very close to it. Started in April 2019. Thoughts at the beginning are less relevant, so you may want to scroll towards the end of my review.... It was so easy," he said. "Just physically ... doing that. When it was over, I thought ... people ... we aren't made of anything. That's how easy it was."

My only disappointment is that my French is not strong enough to read this in the original, where I suspect (based on the translator's note) that it is a funny, playful piece. I can't fault the translator too much -- the thing about humor is that it's the true barometer of whether you understand a language, and in so many respects it simply doesn't translate without so much explication as to render it deadpan, or worse, frustrating. And I wonder also whether in the original, to someone fluent, Foucault is a slightly less dense read -- if some of the complexities of reading Foucault (sometimes a herculean task) arise in part from a use of language on his part so precise that even the best translation will lose some of its saturation, will labor to reproduce the ideas, turning the smooth functioning of his thought into a limping, juddering machine. I think it isn’t enough to survive for the sake of surviving…. Surviving should mean something like it means something to them. And if it doesn’t-There's something so desperate in her way to handle all the crazy stuff that happens constantly and yet she's never ever whining. Not a single time - I often found myself in awe of her perseverance, as I think there's some braveness to show such motivation, even if it's to die at some point. Did I find it stupid? Of course I did. I have a thing against suicide, I can't deny it, that's totally personal and I can't help it - it often obscures my judgment about characters like her, because not only suicide makes me sad, but it piss me off. But Sloane won me. Completely. I took her with all her flaws and wanted just one thing : to read about her. OMG WHEN HE [blank]. OMG I can’t even deal with this book now. I’ve actually had to stop reading for the night to calm down.

this isn't a zombie book so much as a zombie framing device to explore damage and the difficulties of making yourself vulnerable in front of someone - of communication's pitfalls and the numbing effects of trauma. This "kind" of art is indeed one of humanity, of extreme complication and simplicity. The book defies the term contradiction, explains it, and changes the way you look at it, just as it does to a dozen other day to day terms. I could not, in all honesty, condemn or praise a character at any given moment in the story, their actions being far from predictable and absolutely not meant to make me either cheer or despise them.The summary sounded good. Six teens trapped in a school during a zombie crisis slowly go nuts on each other. The book did not deliver. What I was imagining from the summary was some sort of manhunt dog-eat-dog Lord of the Flies style breaking down of these trapped teenagers, where basic survival instincts would drive them into some crazy game of hide and seek trying to kill each other. In essence, the group of survivors themselves would be a more dangerous enemy to each other than any zombie could be. and this. the ramifications of the last two sentences in this quote are quite easy to overlook if you haven't read the book, but: