Sunday, July 24, 2011

Lee Child: Die Trying

As I've been reading for 25 years now (since I learned to read, I never stopped, so you can pretty much calculate my age from that), I must say I haven't yet enountered such a character as Jack Reacher and this type of a crime/action story.

I find I have problems decribing what exactly do I mean by this. It's true that Jack Reacher has qualities that might be a bit stretched as to be ascribed to one human only, but that might only be my non-military perspective. I honestly don't know if military around the world employs such geniously varied and intelligent characters, but I keep thinking if they were so smart, they probably could choose better than military.
(am I prejudiced against military or what?) :)
The thing is, Jack Reacher did choose in the end against military and now drifts around USA and keeps getting into trouble completely accidentally. Which is how we get to read so many novels about him. :)

This one was really interesting as it got into the militia problems and the ways that might escalate into a national (and possibly then a world wide) issue.
The thing that I consider a testament of very good writing is the fact that when Reacher ends up killing some of the really bad characters, I felt vindicated. :) I couldn't stand those people still being alive and creating so much misery and doing torture. Does that make me a bad person? I mean, I know it's fiction but, god, they really deserved to die. And not so fast.

And this came on the heels of the tragedy in Norway. What's wrong with some people?! I just have no words to describe the depth of my disappointment in the mankind. And I can't learn to live with it. I cannot forget or bury the knowledge and go on like everything is fine with the world. It obviously isn't.
I mean, the novel I read is fiction, but what happened in Norway isn't, and what happens in the novel isn't really stretching the imagination far from some of the things that already happened.

I know we are never going to live in a Utopian world but I do wish we'd get at least a step closer to it and not always getting a step farther and farther away.

4 comments:

  1. I don't know what's wrong with some people. Does anyone really think that bombing a kids camp will really help thier cause?

    Even those that agree with their cause will pull away.

    A few years ago we were in Disney and there was a bomb scare on one of the buses. I told the other visitors that no-way that any terrorist organization would bomb Disney. That would not call attention to their cause, quite the opposite that act would make enemies out of friends.

    http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

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  2. Man of la Book, thanks for commenting.
    Honestly, I feel we're giving him more time than he deserves. The truth is, I can't help but feel all these types who kill people for some kind of their "cause" are nothing but sociopaths/psychopaths who found a "cause" that enables them to kill people. Because killing never, ever solved anything, just made more problems.

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  3. Ines, I agree with you. Your comment reminded me of X-Files episode Clide Bruckman's Final Repose which is one of my favorites. A serial killer who kills psychics and fortune tellers keeps asking them the same question: "Why do I do the thing I'm about to do?" The closer to the end when the killer asks that question from a person who actually can predict something, he replies in a very calm and somewhat tired manner: "Don't you understand yet son? Don't you get it? You do the things you do because you're a homicidal maniac."

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  4. Undina, that pretty much sums it up.
    Btw, just yesterday I was talking to a friend and commented on the witch hunts that the Church did and said that it pretty much enabled psychos to "legally" torture and burn women everywhere. Because most of them knew for sure there was no guilt. Only quest for power and dominance.

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