9.21am: business as usual on a high street in England.
9.22am: the explosions are heard for miles around, and in the
early confusion there is talk of a gas leak, a plane crash, and even
terrorism…
The people of Heathwick had been preparing for Christmas unaware
that many would die, and the rest would be transformed for ever. Travel
with them, second-by-second, through the hopes, fears, love, worries,
gossip, cruelty, kindness and trivia that dominated their final minute
before tragedy struck.
And in the everyday story of an ordinary street, look for clues to what happened, and why.
I was browsing for new YA books to read and I came a across The Last
Minute, I for one am a bit of a sucker for a catchy cover art (sorry).
So with a explosion being shown on it, I read the synopsis and as you
can read above it is actually quite catchy. Trying to show the ordinary
lives in a England shopping street as they unconsciously live their last
minute. I did believe this book to be quite a daunting task in writing
up. Especially when taking into account that every single chapter only
displays a single second and that as a writer you have to been on top of
your game in writing up what happens each second and have a clear
overview on the whole as well. You also cannot take the story to fast
because, what can happen in a second? What can happen in a minute? This
was a greatly executed.
The Last Minute starts of at 9.33am in the prologue where you already
get a grasp of the devastation that has been wrecked in Heathwick. Soon
after it though you are thrown in the many perspective of all the
people that are currently on the street. The first thing that was
notable and that Eleanor Updale did nicely was writing the chapters by
the second and alternating them with the “tick-tocking” of the clock,
this really produced a countdown moment, with each chapter you came a
second closer. You as a reader only know that something worse if going
to happen when the clock hits 9.22am but how and why and where you just
don’t know. There are many leads given that could all possible pose a
threat and be the cause of the explosion, but whether it is a singular
start or a combinations of several events that happened exactly at
9.22am? Eleanor Updale made a small detective of this book where it is
up to the reader to get to the bottom.
There are many people in the street, 65 in total. The Last Minute
count 60 chapters one for each second. I was actually quite stunned by
the fact that so many stories were intertwined in those chapters. The
encounters with the people of Heathwick are not only described by saying
“Hallo” on the street but for several of the character you learn quite a
lot about their background in just a few sentences. Taken together with
the impending sense, the highlighted backgrounds of several characters
did produce for me a somewhat “I feel bad for them” feeling. The whole
framework of this book telling the last minute definitely lend a
strength to the book and was further backed up by showing the lives of
the persons of Heathwick.
Though the switching to different characters of the book was done
within a few sentences, there were for me a few moments where it did not
go that smooth, I found this happening for me around the half of the
book, and it somehow took the pacing away a bit. Luckily this was soon
recovered and as the second ticked of. I got that impending doom feeling
and I had to drop everything to finish the last few seconds of this
book.
The Last Minute stops quite abruptly as the last second ticks off..
there is a epilogue in the back that shows a nice reflection the events
that occurred in 9.22am but even the authorities are struck more or less
clueless about what actually transpired. Like I mentioned Eleanor
Updale has done more for The Last Minute than simply this book there is
fully interactive new report online about this story. So that you as a
young reader – aspiring detective – can dig to the bottom of what
happened in Heathwick these documents can be found at www.eleanorupdale.com/minute I think you can have your kids entertained for hours with this book.