Customer Reviews

Displaced Person (Plus)

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This is one of the books I read during my teenage years that really stuck with me. A quietly but genuinely disturbing work, it is not easily classifiable as science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Indeed, which of the three you choose will likely hinge on how you personally interpret this book.

Displaced Person tells the story of a young adult just finishing school who finds himself gradually disappearing from the consciousness of those around him. It is a story that quietly, methodically builds up a kind of nameless cosmic dread with almost Lovecraftian skill. But whereas even Lovecraft has his Cthulhu mythos to offer some kind of explanation for the events that take place in his stories - however alien and unfathomable that explanation may be - what gives this work its special power is very largely the total absence of any explanation at all. The genuine sense of dread it builds is therefore perhaps founded on a bedrock of truth. It reminds us of the old adage that all we know is like a little island of knowledge in a vast sea of unknowing, and that we are, in the greater scheme of things, only very small creatures in an incomprehensibly vast and perhaps ultimately unknowable universe.

From what I can gather, this work appears to have lapsed in relative obscurity. This is a pity, because it really is a very fine piece of young adult literature. If the time I have spent writing this review can reverse the current state of affairs in even a small way, I will consider that time extremely well spent.

Theo.

A teenager finds himself slowly not being noticed by the people around him, from the chick in McDonald's to what is even worse, his parents, and finally his girlfriend.

He ends up displaced into a grey world, not being able to be in contact with where he came from, except as a ghost. He meets a couple of others there, and they struggle to survive and work out what is going on.