172 Hours On the Moon by Johan Harstad

This has been a disappointing story.

The premise is great; the photographs and maps are great, but the writing lets the whole thing down.

I'm not sure if the problem lies with the original storytelling by Harstad or if it's the translation by Tara F Chace. Somewhere, though, it falls flat. The language is boring, the dialogue seems stilted and the overall tone fails to capture one's imagination.

The bits that should have been eerie and scary just made me laugh out loud. And I always knew when someone was about to die because of the sudden flashback to a meaningful childhood moment or a happy time memory in the park with the wife and kids!



Maybe I'm just becoming hard to please or jaded? But I expect more from a book. I expect to be moved, entertained, stimulated, informed but most importantly I expect to be caught up by the magic and mystery of being lost in another world. That's where this book let me down.

And now for the Feature and Follow part of this post.

Even though this book was unsuccessful on many levels, it could be a fabulous movie.
A complete new (vamped up) script, the possibility of amazing location shots in Paris, Japan, Norway, New York and of course, the moon! It could be turned into a really scary, psychological thriller.

The Swedish actress, Noomi Rapace who played The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo could be Mia, Rinko Kikuchi could play Midori and Cyril Mourali could play Antoine.