Kurzbeschreibung

A startling epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children's speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther. But Sam and Claire find it isn't so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition.

Rezension

Praise for The Flame Alphabet:
"Crackles with vicious intelligence." - Entertainment Weekly
"A harrowing tale. . . . Sends chills down the spine."-- The Seattle Times
"Fascinating. . . . A horror story that plays with the power of words."-- The Plain Dealer
"Laden with metaphor. . . . It reads like a dream, complete with all the associative richness that comparison might suggest."-- The New York Times Book Review
"An exciting page-turner." - The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A rich testament to Marcus' gifts" - Los Angeles Times
"A well-oiled heartbreak machine." - New York
"In the guise of a horror novel (albeit one written by a supremely intelligent literary novelist), Marcus has delivered a subtle meditation on the necessity as well as the drawbacks of human communication . . . in searing, sometimes hallucinatory prose." - Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Thrilling, boasting an erudition and an obsessiveness that smacks both of Jorge Luis Borges and of Darren Aronofsky."-- The Boston Globe
"As I read The Flame Alphabet, late into the night, feverishly turning the pages, I felt myself, increasingly, in the presence of the classic." --Michael Chabon
"Marcus succeeds in creating a parallel universe that mirrors a side of human social life that might be more comfortably concealed." - The Columbus Dispatch
"An apocalyptic nightmare. Its vision is eerie, droll and heartbreaking, both lavishly written and haunting to behold. . . .[Marcus's] use of language could hardly be more vibrant." - Portland Press Herald "Some of the most thoughtful and moving writing I've ever read about family life." - Michael Jauchen, The Rumpus
"Disturbing and remarkable." - LA Review of Books
"This novel will cause many mouths to open. Dialogue will ensue. People will have something to say." - Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A mystery, a compulsive page-turner" - Salon
"The Flame Alphabet has the force of a nightmare, a testament to Marcus's skill." - NPR

"Ben Marcus is the rarest kind of writer: a necessary one."--Jonathan Safran Foer
"The Flame Alphabet is less about linguistics than the decay of relationships, the fracturing of familial loyalties, and the everyday heartbreak of human estrangement." - The Millions
"Ben Marcus is a genius, one of the most daring, funny, morally engaged and brilliant writers, someone whose work truly makes a difference in the world."--George Saunders
"A brutal, wonderful book, streaked with the sickly brown and gray hues of Philip K. Dick and David Cronenberg." - The Onion , A. V. Club
"A truly strange, original vision of a post-linguistic world." - Slant Magazine
"Freakishly sad and incredibly good." - Bookforum
"An authentic meditation on the sacred cruelty of communication that will leave his readers speechless." - San Francisco Chronicle
"You will not read too many books like this in your life. - The Financial Times
"For all its surreal touches, it packs an emotional wallop." - Wired

Klappentext

In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a novel about how far we will go in order to protect our loved ones.

The sound of children's speech has become lethal. In the park, adults wither beneath the powerful screams of their offspring. For young parents Sam and Claire, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther. But they find it isn't so easy to leave someone you love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a foreign world to try to save his family.

Auszüge aus dem Buch

By early December we huddled at home, speechless. If we spoke it was through faces gripped in early rigor mortis. Our neighborhood had gone blank, killed down by winter. It was too cold even for the remaining children to do much hunting.
I don't know how else to refer to their work, but sometimes they swarmed the block, flooding houses with speech until the adults were repulsed to the woods.
You'd see a neighbor with a rifle and you'd hear that rifle go off. The trees stood bloodless, barely holding on in the wind. We sat against the window and waited, spying out at the children when they roved through. The children - they should have been called something else - barking toxic vocals through megaphones as they held hands in the street.
I hoped they wouldn't turn and see us in the window, come to the door. I hoped they wouldn't walk up the lawn and push their megaphones against the glass. And always I hoped not to see our Esther in these crowds, but too often there she was in the pack, one of the tallest, bouncing in the winter nighttime fog, breathing into her hands to keep warm. She'd finally found a group of kids to run off with.
If there was an escape to engineer we failed to do so, even while some neighbors loaded cars, smuggling from town when they'd had enough. The quarantine hadn't been declared, but in our area they weren't letting children through checkpoints, except by bus. Basic containment. If you wanted to leave, you left alone.
Even so, bulky rugs were thrust into trunks. Items that required two people to carry. Usually wrapped in cloth, sometimes squirming of their own accord, a child's foot poking out. A clumsy game of hide-and-seek, children sprawled out in cargo carriers, children disguised as something else, so parents could spend a few more minutes with what ailed them.
Claire retired as my test subject. She stopped appearing in the kitchen for night treatments, declined the new smoke. When I served infused milk she fastened her mouth shut. If she accepted medicine from me she did so unwittingly, asleep, whimpering when the needle went in.
I couldn't blame her, falling away like that, embracing the shroud of illness. But I did. I conducted nightly campaigns of blame and accusation, silently, in the monstrous internal speech that is only half sounded out, a kind of cave speech one reserves for private airing. In these broadsides Claire spun on a low podium and absorbed every accusation.
If I prepared a bowl of steamed grain and left it on the table for her, salted as she liked it, pooling in the black syrup, she passed her spoon through it, held up a specimen for study, and could not, just never could, finally slide it in her mouth. For Claire I cut cubes of meat loaf, and at best she tucked one or two in her mouth, where she could suck on them until they shriveled to husks.
Claire no longer slept in her bed and she seemed too listless even to maneuver to the crafts room, to the guest room, to anywhere she might be able to fall unconscious in private.
I was always trying to offer her shield, a modesty curtain, so she could come undone alone and unseen. She shouldn't have to collapse in hallways. If necessary I helped her along, at least to a corner, where I could erect a temporary blind.
Once I found her asleep in the bathroom, one eye stuck open, leaking a speckled fluid. I crouched down and closed the eye, blotted it with my shirt. It opened again and she whispered at me.
"Hi there."
I looked down at her and she blinked, perfectly alert.
Claire must have thought she was smiling, but that was so far from a smile. With my fingers I tried to change the feeling, to reshape her mouth. I couldn't have her looking at me like that.
Her lips were cold and they would not stay where I arranged them. H