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Ashes, Ashes

by Jo Treggiari

In Jo Treggiari’s stunning new YA novel, the world ends with neither a bang nor a whimper. Rather, the end comes with droughts and floods, plus a smallpox epidemic that wipes out 99 per cent of the global population in just a few months.

Ashes, Ashes, however, is concerned with what happens after the end. Lucy “Lucky” Holloway is a 16-year-old survivor carving out an existence in a barely recognizable Central Park. She has built a home, and lives off acorn porridge, dried berries, and whatever else she can forage or hunt. She occasionally sees people in the distance, but she keeps to herself, and has become good at hiding. The world after the plague is not a friendly one, mostly full of desperate survivors driven to theft. Worse, there are the Sweepers, white-suited men from the Compound on Roosevelt Island who round people up. And there are the S’ans, zombie-like infected survivors.

Everything changes, though, when Lucy is saved from a pack of dogs by Aidan, a member of a community of survivors. As their lives intertwine, Lucy is surprised to find herself falling for the older boy. Even more surprising is the fact that the Sweepers seem to be looking for her in particular.

Ashes, Ashes is a compelling, fast-paced read that skimps neither on characterization nor detail. Its opening pages, in which Lucy is on her own, provide a lot of backstory without dragging or seeming programmatic. It’s a difficult trick to hook a reader without dialogue or character interaction, but Treggiari, who was born in the U.K. and lives in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, manages it with aplomb. The story never flags, and the reader’s attention never wavers.

There is something here for just about everyone – romance, survival drama, action, mystery.  Ashes, Ashes is a treat, a book that one imagines, and hopes, will find a large, appreciative following.

 

Reviewer: Robert J. Wiersema

Publisher: Scholastic

DETAILS

Price: $19.99

Page Count: 360 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-0-54525-563-9

Released: June

Issue Date: 2011-6

Categories:

Age Range: 12+