Not Forgetting the Whale - John Ironmonger

Sometimes you read a book with a tear, sometimes with a smile and some you throw across the room. This is the book I told you I was going to read in January - and look, we are only  five days in and I've done it!!

 

I finished this with a smile, even though it is a tale of dystopia - a city analyst who runs away from his job when he realises that a computer programme he invented is definitely showing him what he thought it would, but with disastrous results. The disaster could be an end-of-the-world scenario, and when he finds himself being given the kiss of life on a beach in Cornwall it may already have happened. And if it hasn't, it is going to. He isn't dead, he doesn't know why, but there must be a purpose here somewhere. Perhaps his purpose is to save the villagers from starvation? infection? what?  There are some dark moments in this book, but it isn't a dark tale. It is a heartwarming one, of how, if we are lucky, friends and neighbours just may help out when something is obviously going badly wrong. A clever and rather lighthearted telling of what might be. And of course .. not forgetting the whale.                                                                                                                                                                                       PS. Do please read the author's postscripts when you have finished... there are a few eye-openers there.