Hey everyone,
Hope everyone reading this is doing well! Another book review today, The Last Speck of the World by Flavia Ida. It’s the story of a plague that wipes out humanity. Huh. It came out last year; very timely indeed.
The Last Speck of the World
Book description:
No name. No race. No nationality. The survivor of the perfect catastrophe struggles to preserve herself and her hope that she may be found – by humans.
“I am female, thirty-two, alone in the last speck of the world. My name, my race and my nationality are no longer important. I do not know why the plague has spared me. It has taken everything else. All the clocks and all the machines are dead. What keeps me breathing is the hope that I may not be the sole custodian of the planet.”
My review:
The Last Speck of the World tells the story of a plague that has wiped out all of humanity save for one lonely survivor. The woman is not named. Her speck of the world is not identified. Her race is a mystery. Her background, never revealed. She could be anyone from anywhere. As she struggles to survive, she holds out hope that she is not the last of the human species.
This book is particularly powerful in this day and age. The idea of a plague wiping out both humanity and animal life was once relegated to the realms of science fiction. Now, in startlingly realistic technicolor, we are living in that possibility.
The author, Flavia Ida, has been able to capture, in heartbreaking pose, the small things that make us human: the awe of a sunrise or sunset; a brief, violent illness; memories and thoughts of loved ones; a beloved home and neighborhood; fear; hunger; pain. Survival takes a lot of time, but threaded through those long, lonely days runs the power of hope, optimism, and love.
My favorite sentence, which also happens to be the first sentence in the book: “Another night when the world seemed so beautiful she could almost be persuaded it was the work of the creators.”
I highly recommend this book.
Until next time,
Nancy
Nancy Wood 