The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

 

Reviewed by Ambrea

 

In his book, The Hot Zone, Richard Preston explores the history behind the highly infectious and incredibly deadly ebola viruses.  He takes a look at its possible origins in central Africa and tracks it across continents, all the way to an outbreak in an animal quarantine facility in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.  He examines first-hand accounts, follows scientists who study level 4 “hot” viruses, and weaves a terrifying, nightmarish story about a disease with no cure—and a known fatality rate of 90 percent.

 

I decided to read The Hot Zone at the recommendation of our favorite librarian, Jeanne, and found a copy of the audio book on Tennessee READS.  Although I selected an abridged version of Preston’s book – and I feel a little like I missed out on some details – I still found it to be a compelling read, nonetheless.  Preston’s book, even trimmed down to fit a five-hour time frame, is one of those that hooks you in the first few minutes and then never really lets you go.

 

Narrated by Howard McGillin, The Hot Zone is a suspenseful and terrifying book simply for the fact that it deals with a very modern disease, one that humankind has yet to understand.  This wasn’t like reading about the bubonic plague (we have antibiotics for that), or polio (we have a vaccine for that), or cholera (we have antibiotics for that, too).  Nowadays, there’s a very good chance a person could survive any one of those illnesses, but that’s definitely not the case with ebola.

 

Ebola will very likely kill you.  Quickly, painfully – and then it’ll get everyone around you.

 

I have to admit The Hot Zone has pretty much killed my interest in diseases, plagues, and disasters – at least, temporarily – because, after finishing it, I think I need some time to recover.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I listened to Preston’s book.  It’s well-written, fast-paced, and intensely compelling.  While it may rely heavily on thriller tropes and shock value, it kept me riveted (and filled with mortal dread) from the first minute; however, it’s also one of the more gruesome books I’ve read recently and it involves a lot of death, specifically of the human and simian variety.

 

I don’t recommend eating lunch while listening to this audio book.  It will definitely spoil your appetite.

Nevermore: Hello Girls, Girl on the Train, My Cousin Rachel, Long Black Veil, Taduno's Song, St. Louie Slow Drag, Hot Zone, Sapiens

Reported by Jeanne

Nevermore opened with praise for Jennifer Boylan’s Long Black Veil.  The story revolves around six college students who sneak into an abandoned prison on a lark.  The situation turns deadly, and the survivors find their lives forever changed. Thirty years later, a police officer arrests one of the former students, and another is faced with revealing secrets that could ruin her life.  The story moves back and forth from 1980 to the present day, and one thing our reader found most intriguing was simply realizing how much social norms have changed in that relatively small period of time.  She said it was a good, scary book that reminded the reader that secrets will come out.

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston was the next book up.  Our reader had lived near Reston, Virginia at one point, so the implications hit home for her.  The story is divided between a history of how the ebola virus was discovered and a frightening incident that occurred in a Reston lab in 1989.  Our reader said it a thrilling, terrifying book, and she recommended it to the others.

A Nigerian musician in exile receives a letter from his girlfriend that causes him to return home in the debut novel Taduno’s Song by Odafe Atogun.  Once there, he discovers no one remembers him, that his identification is all gone, and his girlfriend is missing.  It’s a Kafkaesque situation, in which the protagonist is powerless to do anything except play his music. Our reader enjoyed the book.

Sapiens by Yuval N. Harari details a number of different theories about mankind’s evolution, but he shows little or favoritism for any particular theory.  The author, a professor of history at Hebrew University, discusses the various human species whose remains have been found while describing the way our species has developed.  There’s an overwhelming amount of information packed into each page, which makes for slow reading; but the Nevermore member is finding it well written and quite good.

More recent history is covered in The Hello Girls by Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman. World War I saw the first telephone lines used as a means of communication, and the first American women soldiers sent to France to operate them.  Their path was not an easy one.  They had very little respect, either from the male soldiers or the female nurses; they were in war zones; and both food and shelter were deplorable.  Our reviewer was impressed with General John “Black Jack” Pershing, who championed the women. She thought the book was quite an eye-opener, and thought more people should know about that particular part of WWI.

Our next reader was engrossed in Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.  It’s the story of three different women whose lives become intertwined. Rachel takes the train to and from work every day.  She begins watching a couple who seem to be living perfect lives, including the perfect marriage— something that attracts Rachel, unhappily divorced and upset over her ex’s new wife.   Then an apparent crime draws together the lives of these three women, surprising the reader with twists and turns.  Our reviewer hasn’t finished the book, but is finding it to be intriguing, entertaining, and well written, with especially strong characterization.

St. Louie Slow Drag, the second in the Julia Nye series by Jo Allison, is a historical mystery set in St. Louis in 1910. Julia works as a typist in the local police department, which is not her only unconventional activity.  She’s also a suffragette and is willing to go on a date to a seedy part of town to hear ragtime great Scott Joplin play.  An explosion and fire sends the club-goers fleeing—and the kerosene can says this was no accident.  Our reader was impressed with the amount of historical detail in the book.  Allison creates a vivid portrait of life at the time, including race relations, the calls for women’s suffrage, and the march for Prohibition. She recommends the entire series.

Finally, a reader picked up My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier.  A young man is intrigued by his late cousin’s beautiful widow in a complex romantic-suspense novel set in Cornwall.  Our reader gave up on it early, saying that she had just read Jamaica Inn and that was a hard act to follow.  She may try it again later.

The Hot Zone: Ebola

Reviewed by Jeanne

Anyone listening to the news these days has heard of Ebola, the frightening virus claiming so many victims in Africa.  There was a bit of an outcry when two Americans infected with the virus were brought to the U.S. for treatment.  Some were horrified at the idea this disease was in the country.

Actually, a strain of it has been here for decades.

Back in 1995, someone suggested I read a book called The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.  It was the true story about a disease outbreak but was as compelling as any novel, I was told.  Ebola wasn’t anything I’d ever heard of before, and I wasn’t sure the book was anything I wanted to read.  

The story is spun in two parts.  The first deals with the emergence of the filoviruses, the category to which Ebola belongs.  One of the first was Marburg, named for the German port where a worker came down with a viral hemorrhagic fever. The symptoms include high fever, severe headaches, and bleeding, usually from multiple sites.  The mortality rate is high; about a quarter of the patients who contract the disease will die. That number was bad enough, but a worse one was about to emerge with the discovery of Ebola.  The symptoms are similar, but the Ebola outbreak killed about 75% of its victims.

The second part of the book concerned a lab in Reston, Virginia, which housed a number of primates including some from the Philippines who turned out to have a variant strain of the Ebola virus.  While this strain turned out not to be transmittable to humans, the story of the way the situation was handled kept me on the edge of my seat. 

My friend was right about The Hot Zone.  The book was absolutely riveting and more than a little terrifying.  It’s not just a story of petri dishes and microscopes but a very human story.  It’s also a mystery, as researchers try to figure out where Ebola and related viruses originate.  They seemingly appear out of nowhere in populations and then vanish again.  

I finished the book with enormous respect for the brave doctors and researchers who try to identify these diseases and who care for the ill.  I admit I wept a time or two, but the narrative kept me turning pages. I went on to read another book or two on the subject, but I have to say that Preston’s remains the gold standard for me in terms of information and readability. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.

Favorite Frights!

Melon votes for Godzilla as favorite movie monster.

Since it is the season for ghosties and ghoulies and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, we thought we’d talk a bit about scary books and movies. Horror like beauty is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

First up is Jeanne:

I don’t read a lot of horror books any more. I did while I was in high school many, many years ago. There was this new guy, Stephen King, and he did some good books like Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot. I read Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin and The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I read a lot of Shirley Jackson, like We Have Always Lived in the Castle (still a favorite) and The Haunting of Hill House. I read a lot of forgettable books, too; so forgettable that I have forgotten them. Then a neighbor recommended that I read Richard Matheson’s Hell House (also known as The Legend of Hell House) because it was the scariest book he’d ever read.

The plot was fairly standard. A group of researchers go to an allegedly haunted house. It’s a diverse group, of course, with skeptics mixed in with believers, mediums and scientists. The house in question belonged to an eccentric millionaire who disappeared after some murders; no one knows how he was involved, victim or perpetrator. Naturally—or unnaturally—things start to happen after the researchers move in. I’m sketchy on the details. I do remember finishing the book and thinking, “Well, that wasn’t so scary.”

Pride goeth before a fall.

I hadn’t been asleep for more than a few minutes when I began to dream about the book. I was so badly frightened I sat up the rest of the night and only dozed off after the sun came up. It took several nights for me to be able to sleep without dreaming about a particular scene. I don’t know exactly what it was about the book, but it’s the one that sort of weaned me away from horror. I never wanted to be afraid to go to sleep like that again.

That was the first Richard Matheson book I ever read. He’s one of those wonderful underrated authors who can write stories that linger in the mind. Sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes it is a bad thing! His stories were adapted for film: he wrote a number of the Twilight Zone episodes, including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” about the demon on the plane’s wing that only one passenger sees. Or is the man simply hallucinating? He also wrote Bid Time Return, which was made into the movie “Somewhere in Time” with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour and was a sweetly romantic story. Possibly his best known work is I Am Legend, a vampire tale that has been made into a move three times and had a graphic novel adaptation, but for all that he remains an author that few people seem to know by name.

There are scary non-fiction books, too. There are at least two non-fiction books that kept me tossing and turning as well as turning pages. The first was Helter Skelter : the True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, which isn’t surprising: killers are scary, especially ones who are just plain nuts. Just as scary, though, was The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, which was the first time I had ever heard of the ebola virus. I learned more than I ever thought I wanted to know about deadly diseases and he made it fascinating and exciting. I found myself holding my breath when the investigators went into a cave where it was suspected the virus could be found. I also used a lot of hand sanitizer and worried a bit when I had a headache. The Hot Zone is a book as thrilling as it is terrifying, and a great reminder that not all monsters come in large packages.

I would tell my scariest movie, but it’s too embarrassing. I found it on a list of the most ridiculous movies ever made. Somehow it seemed really scary when I watched on “Chilller” very late one night, back when I was twelve. Suffice it to say, there was a creature locked up behind a door for most of the movie and all the audience could see was an arm attempting to grab the mad scientist. Perhaps I’ll settle for the more respectably scary “The Birds.”

What would your picks be?