The Last Ones Left Alive
By Sarah Davis-Goff
Tinder Press
This book lays its influences on the table from the outset, with McCarthy’s The Road, and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale having clearly informed how Davis-Goff constructed the post-apocalyptic Ireland in which her novel takes place. The narrative oscillates between the training the protagonist, Orpen, receives as a child in preparation for the horrors that exist away from her peaceful island-home of Slanbeg, and a pilgrimage towards the mysterious Phoenix City Orpen undertakes as an adult. A four-legged companion and one wounded, wheelbarrow-bound guardian make this harrowing journey all the more dramatic.
The feminist themes of this story are clear: the training Orpen receives to protect herself from the monstrous, zombie-like ‘skrake’ now haunting Ireland is also to protect her from men, who have inflicted equal suffering upon anyone left alive, a plausible scenario in the event of biohazardous catastrophe and subsequent dystopia. Their behavior is often described rather starkly: “Being able to control ourselves…is the essential difference between us, and the skrake, and between us and men.” Making things more complicated, the skrake (from the Irish for ‘scream’) are capable of speech and charm, unlike classic Romero-style zombies and more akin to the monsters in Matheson’s I am Legend, another likely influence. Davis-Goff has signed a two-book deal with publisher Tinder Press, so horror fans can expect another page-turner in the near-future.
Words: Paulie Doyle
