16 May 2010

Poison games

Months after reading Suzanne Collins' Catching fire, (impressive and compelling first sequel to The hunger games), the section that stays most vividly with me is chapter 21 in part 3 ("The enemy").

In that chapter, the contestants are afflicted by a creeping fog of nerve gas which drives them before it down hill towards a lethal shore.

When I read it, I was reminded of the bunker scenes in Janette Turner Hospital's appallingly bleak Due preparations for the plague. As time goes by, the bond between the two grows stronger in my me, As either is brought to mind (as Hospital was, a few minutes ago, by a chance remark on the news), the other follows it.

I wonder whether Collins had read Hospital – or whether the linkage is entirely mine.


  • Suzanne Collins, Catching fire. (The Hunger Games trilogy.) 2009, New York: Scholastic Press. 9780439023498 or 0439023491
  • Janette Turner Hospital Due preparations for the plague. 2003, Pymble, NSW: Fourth Estate 0732277302 (pbk.)

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