Link: Amazon, Goodreads, Price: £6.99
Robert Neville is the last man alive. Every other man, woman, child and dog is now a vampire. They are out to drink his blood. Barricaded in his home by night, locked in the desperate necessities of survival day, how will he go on? And why?
Man. Man Man Man. Man! Man manly man type man man man. Maaaaaaan!!!!
It is incredibly difficult to talk about this book without spoilers, and the spoilers would ruin the book. Matheson doesn’t even tell you there are vampires until you’re a fair distance in the book, but this is on the back cover of almost every edition.
What we do know from the very beginning is the Robert Neville is a very manly type man, suffering from intense man pain (one guess as to the reason – yep, you guessed it), and dealing with it through his intense masculinity. He would be quite unlikeable if he wasn’t in such a desperate situation. The danger is you read the blurb, you read page one, you think the whole thing is going to play out like a computer game and you put good old manly Neville back in the past where he belongs.
Yet everything about this book is subversive. There is a core of good, hard science in this science fiction, which is very well presented so as not to alienate those of us without biology degrees. It may occasionally feel derivative, but only because this first great example of Sci Fi Horror has inspired writers including Dean Koontz, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. His writing feels familiar because so many greats have copied it!
Read this book. Do not skim along the surface. Actually, do skim along the surface, and then read it again. Matheson explores the nature of scientific inquiry, the pain of sexual frustration, the justice of moral relativity and a whole lot more in a book that pretends to be MAN vs VAMPIRES – fight! Until it isn’t about that at all.
Also, Maaaaaan Paaaaaaaain!
