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Feb 2024
11:29am, 29 Feb 2024
53,788 posts
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McGoohan
Not to be confused with:
The Greenhouse by Jessie High-Grass - a delightful post-apocalypic marajuana-growing comedy-drama
'Our High House' - by Suggsy Greenstreet - 80s pop ditty.
Our high house
in the middle of our high street
The Highest House - US stoner fratboy comedy starring Chris Rock, Chris Pine, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Farley and Damon Wayans.
No. This is The High House by Jessie Greengrass our March 2024 book of the month of the book group read of the month of the book as chosen by Chrisull.
Cast your thoughts - like a game fisherman enticing a recalcitrant salmon from its murky hiding place - into the thread below.
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Feb 2024
12:06pm, 29 Feb 2024
84,805 posts
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Diogenes
Is it The Man In The High Castle?
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Feb 2024
12:12pm, 29 Feb 2024
53,792 posts
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McGoohan
This is the high man in the castle
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Mar 2024
10:14am, 3 Mar 2024
53,810 posts
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McGoohan
I think I had a slight possible ‘advantage’ going into this in that my recent reading patterns have matched Chrisull’s. Like Chris, I’ve been reading some Christopher Priest, most notably Fugue For A Darkening Island. On the face of it as dystopias go, The High House is like a mirror image of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Back to the equally bleak Christopher Priest first. ‘Fugue’ has a racial angle: mass immigration following war in Africa leading to the rise of the right and the collapse of democracy. So far, not very High House. Structurally though, I found the books very similar. Both flash back and forward to show the warning signs on the way to societal collapse. Both offer not much in the way of hope.
THH is very readable – I think the swapping of viewpoints between the three younger characters worked really well for me. You can see them struggling to understand each other. It’s quite an affecting tale too. Francesca tries to hold on to a future for her son, so has set up a situation where he can be protected and isolated from the outside world.
So, I whizzed through the book and got to the end very quickly for me and while I did enjoy it a lot – I’ve scored it an 8 – for me it has two flaws which I put before you, members of the jury.
1. Francesca’s actions have set up a situation where our three (four with Grandy) characters do not have to interact with the outside world. That could be taken to be a cop-out on the author’s part. No wandering bands of survivors, no scavengers, no news of what’s happening anywhere else. She – Greengrass, not Francesca – simply doesn’t have to deal with that. But has the outside world completely gone away? It’s all failed everywhere? It’s a bit of a cop-out.
2. And that would have been permissible I think if there’d been more of a thesis to the book. Its ending is as bleak as The Road. It doesn’t matter that the characters are nicer. There’s no hope, everyone is going to die. Er, and that’s it.
McCarthy has a world on fire populated by a few survivors who have reverted to savagery. THH has a flooded world but essentially decent people slowly negotiating around each other’s needs. Both books at heart are about the struggle to stay ‘good people’ while the world is falling apart around you. Which of the two is truest to life, future history will tell: will it be Putin’s bombs that kill us or will we kill ourselves more slowly with climate change? Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’ comes to mind.
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Mar 2024
10:14am, 3 Mar 2024
53,811 posts
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McGoohan
After that, I needed something more cheerful to read so I’m now reading a ludicrously bad fantasy novel.
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Mar 2024
8:56pm, 3 Mar 2024
84,854 posts
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Diogenes
I thought The Road was a remarkable book, and I thought the ending was beautiful, and just right.
Most dystopian, post-apocalyptic novels I have read have disappointed me (Station Eleven and Nod, for example, both former book group choices). Apart from The Road, Lionel Shriver’s The Mandibles is the best I have read. I know Shriver is problematic, but she knows how to follow through an idea.
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Mar 2024
9:09pm, 3 Mar 2024
53,815 posts
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McGoohan
I don't disagree about The Road - I think it's a wonderful book. But it's about as bleak as it gets. Any bleaker and you'd start coming back round the other side into cheerfulness.
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Mar 2024
11:10am, 4 Mar 2024
66,993 posts
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LindsD
Thank you to Chrisull for choosing this. I sped through it in 2 days, and it would have been faster if I hadn’t had to keep putting it down because it was too bleak and depressing. I really liked it. The writing was good and the story compelling. I found it particularly good on the absolute blinkers that we all have for what’s happening around us and what is happening to other people. There were also some descriptions that really chimed with me. A lot of the passages about being around Pauly were so evocative of looking after small children/parenting, but one in particular that took me right back was when she describes coming home from university and pulling down the window to breathe in the air.
I used to catch the train to Preston, and just before the station the train passes over the Ribble, which at the point is wide and the viaduct is high. The ground drops away into the valley and darkness and you can see the river if there’s a moon. That’s when I knew I was home.
I read a review just before I finished it, and I kinda wish I hadn’t, as it pointed out that although the characters of Sal and Caro were different, their voices were not, and I do agree with that. I had also wondered why there were no violent people in this particular dystopia, but I guess that was explained because the house was hidden. I wanted to know what the story was with Sal and her Grandy – where were her parents? And where was Caro’s mother?
Minor gripes, though. I enjoyed this very much. I think I will read her first novel.
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Mar 2024
11:10am, 4 Mar 2024
66,994 posts
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LindsD
I gave it an 8
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Mar 2024
11:14am, 4 Mar 2024
66,995 posts
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LindsD
Your gripe number 1 is my 'why are there no violent people'? I think.
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Book Group
Jul 2025