Book Club Challenge: The Passage by Justin Cronin

The Etsy Metal Book Club has been at it again. This time around we read Justin Cronin's "The Passage". Cronin has an excellent way with words and our pieces were connected to the text much more than they have been in the past. So much so that we have all included the text that inspired our work, so instead of summing up the story, I've decided to let the excerpts speak for themselves and would encourage anyone who enjoys a good apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic story to pick this one up.

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"For instance: Subject Zero glowed. In the infrared any heat source would do that. But the image of Subject Zero flared on the screen like a lit match, almost too bright to look at. Even his crap glowed. His hairless body, smooth and shiny as glass, looked coiled - that was the word Grey thought of, like the skin was stretched over lengths of coiled rope - and his eyes were the orange of highway cones. But the teeth were the worst. Every once in a while Grey would hear a little tinkling sound on the audio, and know it was the sound of one more tooth dropping from Zero's mouth to the cement. They rained down at the rate of half a dozen a day. These went into the incinerator, like everything else; it was one of Grey's jobs to sweep them up and it gave him the shivers to see them, long as little swords' you'd get in a fancy drink. Just the thing if, say, you wanted to unzip a rabbit and empty it out in two seconds flat."

Beth Cyr: Sterling Silver

Beth Cyr: Sterling Silver

The idea of the teeth falling out and being replaced made me think of sharks - gnarly teeth that could bite through anything, still there when everything else was gone. I liked the idea of them being shiny and glinting in the light out of the darkness.
-Beth Cyr (bcyrjewelry)

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 "...Peter's father had seen the ocean: his father, the great Demetrius Jaxon, Head of the Household, and Peter's uncle Willem, First Captain of the Watch. Together they'd led the Long Rides farther than anyone had ever gone, since before the Day. Eastward, toward the morning sun, and west to the horizon line and farther still, into the empty cities of the Time Before. Always his father returned with stories of the great and terrible sights he'd seen, but none was more wondrous than the ocean, in a place he called the Long Beach. Imagine, Peter's father told the two of them-for Theo was there as well, the two Jaxon brothers sitting at the kitchen table of their small house in the hour of their father's return, raptly listening, drinking his words like water-imagine a place an endless tumbling blueness, like the sky turned upside down. And sunk down in it, the rusting ribs of great ships, a thousand thousand of them, like a whole drowned city of man's creation, jutting from the ocean's waters as far as the eye could see. Their father was not a man of words; he communicated only with the most sparing phrases and parceled his affections the same way, letting a hand on a shoulder or a well-timed frown or, in moments of approval, a terse nod from the chin do most of his speaking for him. But the stories of the Long Rides brought out the voice in him. Standing on the ocean's edge, his father said, you could feel the bigness of the world itself, how quiet and empty it was, how alone, with no man or woman to look at it to say its name through all the years and years."

widflowerdesigns: Sterling Silver, Australian Opal

The entire time I was pondering what to create, I kept coming back to the idea of an object holding hope for the wearer. My ring is something that Peter's mother, Prudence Jaxon would own. The opal would be something that Demetrius would have picked up during a long ride, using it as a worry stone until he realized the beauty beneath the surface. The stone then would have been fixed into a crude ring with other small, unknown components that Demetrius picked up from his long rides and brought back to his family proving that life outside the walls did exist. Prudence did not have many personal possessions....that alone would speak to the importance of wearing an impractical "pretty" ring.
-Stacey (wildflowerdesigns)

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 When I first opened up the book I was intrigued from the start. I normally would not read this genre of story, but the book club is a great tool for me to open up a bit.  It was a book about a scenario that could happen and how fast, humans could be in a uncontrollable situation and what life would be like trying to survive. From the beginning you understand that there is a key (hope) and so I found myself reading to see how they would get out of each situation. Overall I liked the story, and the writer kept my attention the whole time. It really made me try and relate it to how it would be in a natural disaster and how my family might survive as I tend NOT to think in detail about things like that, so its a good thing in a indirect way.
~Victoria Takahashi (Experimetal)

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 "Teacher sealed the door behind them. A curious and premature pause; Sara had expected more. Where was she going? she asked Teacher. Would it be a long journey? Was someone coming for her? How long was she to wait here, in this room? But Teacher seamed not to hear these questions. She crouched before her, positioning her large, soft face close to Sara's. Little Sara, she asked, what do you suppose is out there, outside this building, beyond the rooms where you live? And what of the men you sometimes see, the ones who come and go at night, watching over you? Teacher was smiling, but there was something different about this smile, thought Sara, something that made her afraid. She didn't want to answer, but Teacher was looking straight at her, her face expectant. Sara thought of her mother's eyes, the night she asked her where she slept. A castle? she said, for in her sudden nervousness that was the only thing she could think of. A castle, with a moat? A castle, Teacher said. I see. And what else little Sara? The smile was suddenly gone. I don't know, said Sara. Well, Teacher said, and cleared her throat. It's not a castle."

ErinAustin: Sterling Silver

ErinAustin: Sterling Silver

 My ring is for Sara. As I was reading the book I wasn't aware of what an impact her character was making on me, but when I think back on the story now, I think about Sara a good deal. It's a sort of reminder that although her reality is one of monsters and teeth, fear and survival, there is still room to hope for more, just as she did as a child.
~Erin Austin (ErinAustin)

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If you've read The Passage let us know what you thought in the comments!

Thanks for reading!