The Finalist Too Compelling to Put Down
Though this novel begins with the
death of a 51-year-old actor during a performance of King Lear,
it quickly flips into a bleak, mysterious future in which most of the world has
been killed off by a pandemic flu. Two young people, who now play instruments
and act in the productions of a theatrical caravan called Traveling Symphony,
walk from ad hoc town to ad hoc town, dodging doomsday cults and bandits,
clinging to a certain comic book written by the actor's ex-wife—the
last link to the civilization that vanished when they were almost too young to
remember it. A finalist for the National Book Award, this imaginative, dazzling
read is so eerily timely that it both terrifies and seduces.
