Phase Six
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Mozhan Marnò
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Written by:
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Jim Shepard
About this listen
This "novel of contagion and collapse is also the story of love’s unlikely survival in the most hostile conditions” (Karen Russell, bestselling author of Swamplandia!)—from the National Book Award-nominated author of The Book of Aron.
In a tiny settlement on the west coast of Greenland, 11-year-old Aleq and his best friend, frequent trespassers at a mining site exposed to mountains of long-buried and thawing permafrost, carry what they pick up back into their village, and from there Shepard's harrowing and deeply moving story follows Aleq, one of the few survivors of the initial outbreak, through his identification and radical isolation as the likely index patient.
While he shoulders both a crushing guilt for what he may have done and the hopes of a world looking for answers, we also meet two Epidemic Intelligence Service investigators dispatched from the CDC--Jeannine, an epidemiologist and daughter of Algerian immigrants, and Danice, an M.D. and lab wonk. As they attempt to head off the cataclysm, Jeannine--moving from the Greeland hospital overwhelmed with the first patients to a Level 4 high-security facility in the Rocky Mountains--does what she can to sustain Aleq.
Both a chamber piece of multiple intimate perspectives and a more omniscient glimpse into the megastructures (political, cultural, and biological) that inform such a disaster, the novel reminds us of the crucial bonds that form in the midst of catastrophe, as a child and several hypereducated adults learn what it means to provide adequate support for those they love. In the process, they celebrate the precious worlds they might lose, and help to shape others that may survive.
©2021 Jim Shepard (P)2021 Random House AudioWhat the critics say
One of The A.V. Club's Best Books of the Year
“Riveting...Shepard writes with drilling authority about Greenland, epidemiology, the challenges women doctors and scientists face, and the confounding complexities of the microbial world. With word-by-word artistry, fluid compassion, and deep insights, Shepard emphatically dramatizes epic failures, self-sacrificing dedication, desolation, and love.” (Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review)
“No amount of prior admiration for Jim Shepard’s fiction prepared me for the magnificent Phase Six - a book at once so wise and so funny, so bleak and so tender. With astonishing virtuosity, he conveys huge amounts of information in a way that is not only lucid but utterly gripping, and he creates characters who make me want to rush into the novel to save them from the virus and themselves. What a triumph!” (Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field)
“Paced like a prophetic thriller...Shepard has frequently employed research as a foundation for his literary creations, but never before in such pulse-racing fashion.... Readers will find themselves in territory that feels eerily familiar - panic, politics, uncertainty, fear, a resistance to quarantine, an overload of media noise - as Shepard's command of tone never lets the tension ease.... All the narrative propulsion of escapist fiction without the escape.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)