Monday morning a dark river of aircraft flowed overhead for an hour or more. Not ours unfortunately. I’d never seen so many aircraft. They looked like big fat transport planes and they weren’t being molested by anyone, though a half-hour later six of our Air Force jets whistled past on the same route. We waved to them, optimistically.

Seriously, what country is invading them?

Because their whole little debate about how the countries all around them are all poor and covetous is being followed up by a display of some pretty serious military capacity right here. I mean, it’s not unheard of for a country to overspend on the military and have that not be indicative of their overall financial health (coughcough) but that does rather narrow things down a bit and throw a wrench in the whole ‘the invaders are never identified’ device. I’m increasingly getting the feeling that the author is just making up stuff willy-nilly and using the ‘it could be anyone’ as an excuse to not look up with other people’s militaries are actually capable of.

Ah well, at least the enemy is getting some supplies and I don’t have to harp so much on why they aren’t raiding the countryside for food. Except for this one last time, because seriously, IT’S BEEN A WHILE WHAT WERE YOU EATING?

Ellie and the others go back to her house for a few more forgotten supplies, including chickens so they can have some eggs down in Hell. When they get back, Ellie and Lee talk about how they totsmagoats made out that one time, but Ellie hasn’t tried to follow up on it because she’s been rather preoccupied with all the running and hiding and such.

Lee gets upset by this answer, and presses her until she admits that she likes him, and then gets pissy because she’s also been making moon eyes at Homer.

I don’t really like Lee anymore.

Ellie doesn’t particularly like him either at the moment and storms off.

The chooks were in it, looking shocked, maybe because they’d heard me chucking my tantrum; more likely because they were wondering what the hell they were doing there.

Oh. ‘What the hell.’ I just made a joke.

Uh…okay, Ellie.

Ellie decides to follow the creek and see where it goes, and eventually she gets to a spot where there’s clearly the ruins of an old house/shack.

My heart suddenly beat wildly. Roses! Here, in the middle of Hell! Impossible!

Damn, Hermit, what kind of roses have you been growing? Because mine get all my attention and still die. Those little divas will wilt at the drop of a hat.

Ellie pokes through the hermit’s hut and explores his derelict things before going back to the group so they can do the same thing. Aaaaand that goes all of nowhere. Just flatly gets dropped without so much as a conversation. What an oddly placed little cul-de-sac that came about just because the author directed Ellie to get curious. It’s almost as if this hut is important later, and the ‘discovering’ scene got added in a later draft. It could pretty neatly be taken out without disrupting anything else going on, as it has no effect on any of the scenes around it.

Later that night, Fi and Ellie talk about how she has a huge crush on Homer and doesn’t know what to do about it, despite knowing he likes her, too. Ellie wonders if Fi has a problem with him being Greek. Funny how a book that claims ‘other people are invading us because we treated them badly’ keeps brushing up against all this Greek/racism stuff without actually engaging with it.

It would have been just my luck to be a castaway on a desert island with two guys and to like both of them. But Fi’s saying ‘sexy’ had made me realise that with Homer it was pretty physical. I didn’t want to spend hours with him talking about life; I wanted to spend hours with him making animal noises

…uh, thanks for letting us know, Ellie. First hint of this dynamic.

Seriously, this book reads like it was stitched together in a 3rd draft. Well, not the whole book. But all of the relationships, definitely.

I didn’t know much about [Lee’s] life, but when I looked at his face and eyes it was like looking into the Atlantic Ocean.

Sorry, I’m just amused at the specificity of which ocean.

There’s several pages of summarizing the kids doing chores, which I actually don’t mind in isolation because I love shit like this, but I just…don’t feel like it’s leading to anything? Probably I’m just not in the right frame of mind to be reading it, I’ve been stuck on this book too long.

Ellie and Lee have yet another conversation about their relationship, in which Ellie elaborates on her feels. She does like Lee, but she’s worried that if they have a falling out while they’re in such a small and tense group, it’s going to ruin their dynamic, which could be drastic given the circumstances they are in.

‘Oh Ellie,’ Lee said. ‘Why do you have to reason everything through all the time? The future is the future. It has to take care of itself.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

This isn’t even a good line in a peacetime scenario, much less the one you kids are in right now.

I kind of hate Lee.

‘And you think I’m all head and no heart?’

‘No! Stop twisting what I’m saying. But remember the guy who lived here. His heart must have gradually dried up, till it was like a little dried apricot, and all he had left was his reason. I hope it was a big consolation to him.’

I really hate Lee right now.

There’s a way to make the argument he’s making (you can’t plan for everything, a bit of improve is always necessary, and taking calculated risks is worth it sometimes) but the way he’s making it says a lot. And, yeah, he’s basically telling Ellie she’s cold and that feelings are more important. I’ve never heard someone make that ‘feelings’ argument without it being “I want to ignore your concerns and guilt you into doing what I want to do and then leaving you with the consequences that you rightly predicted.”

So, Lee is the worst.

‘That’s probably because your feelings are being confused by your mind. Your feelings might be coming through loud and clear, but before they get to the surface your brain gets in the way and muddles them around.’

I can’t read this as anything but manipulative.

Also, listen to your brain, everyone. It’s not just there to get in the way, I promise.

They get to the hermit hut and while exploring Lee finds a hidden case full of letters and pictures and an old military medal. It’s pretty clear that the hermit was this ‘Bertram Christie’ guy that got a medal in a war and lost his wife and child in a house fire. And yet, because Ellie is stuck on the belief that the hermit is some serial murderer, she’s like ‘who’s this guy’ and ‘maybe all these family photos are of the family he killed’ and such and it drags out for several pages until she gets it.

C’mon, Ellie, you’re better than this.

They get back to camp, where Homer and Fi have clearly had some sort of interaction that’s made them awkward. Fi gets Ellie alone to talk about it and apparently has just now discovered that Homer is worried she’ll look down on him.

I’d be more interested if this wasn’t told to us all in summary.

Oh, and if we weren’t on our third chapter in a row of relationship drama told to us via summary.

I think this book is just a summary of several other books mashed together.

More camping stuff happens, and Ellie spends several pages ruminating on the nature of killing and whether doing it in self-defense is okay and even if it is okay, is there a line beyond which it’s not. Her conclusion is… she’s going to operate on instinct and not worry about. I guess coming down pretty firmly on the side of ‘there is no line,’ then?

Sounds like Lee’s “just do things and your brain is the enemy so don’t listen to it” argument was very effective!

And yes, I could think of one way in which I was different. It was confidence. The people I knew who thought brutal thoughts and acted in brutal ways – the racists, the sexists, the bigots – never seemed to doubt themselves. They were always so sure that they were right.

I mean, it’s kind of a dangerous ending point, to declare “I feel bad about it and therefore it’s okay if I keep doing the thing.” I bet you a dollar there’s a bigot out there who thought doing The Thing was bad, but justified it and did it anyway.

It’s…not necessarily the worst thought as a starting point. Kind of like “if I use this feeling to keep continually asking myself where the line is and not get complacent.” I could get behind that. But just ‘bad guys don’t care, and I care, therefore I’m not bad no matter what I do’ is…quite a choice, there, book.

What happens when you run up against a bigot who feels bad, Ellie? What then? Do you decide he’s really a good guy because he felt bad about it?

I mean, looking around White America right now, that’s not an uncommon conclusion, but that’s why your soliloquy sucks.