2015/13: After Z-Hour -- Elizabeth Knox

2015/13: After Z-Hour -- Elizabeth Knox

I wanted to learn something, and felt that this might be my only opportunity in an age of noise, distractions, proscribed imagination and inattention, an age where as an intelligent, educated person I was only sufficiently powerful. This — house, storm, closed road — was my element. Out in the world I was at ease. But here I was alive, surrounded by a warm crowd of ideas and possibilities, knowing that even to surrender myself to the circumstances would not endanger me — I couldn’t be endangered, not just because I have a strong will and, inside myself, a great hinterland of anger from which strength flows like an endless army, but because here I was whatever could endanger me. [loc. 956]

After Z-Hour is Elizabeth Knox's first novel, originally published in 1987 and reissued in 2014. It begins with a tremendous storm, and landslips that strand six travellers overnight in a house that is not as abandoned as it seems. ( slightly spoilery review )