Randomly remembered this book today, and thought it'd be interesting to see whether anyone else did:
The book is told in first person by a boy who's gone through a strange 'fading' process in which people around him pay less and less attention to him (there's a scene near the beginning in which he waits for over an hour, unsuccessfully, to get served in a fast food place as the server keeps forgetting about him and eventually not seeming to hear him when he calls out) and eventually even the things he sees around him fade into gray. He's left wandering through this greyness, unable to contact the normal world.
He eventually finds a couple of other people - I remember there being an old or middle-aged man and a girl around his age (might have been called Maureen? I might have that wrong). Might have been one or two others, don't know. These people don't have an explanation for any of this (and we never do get one) but the man has a theory that whoever is in charge of the universe sometimes forgets about particular people and they get sort of lost through the cracks of reality. This also happens to objects now and again, so the people in the grayworld go out scavenging to see what things they can find. This is how they survive - food and bottled drinks sometimes slip through, though finding enough is an ongoing problem.
It also turns out that people in the grayworld will, after a while, undergo some kind of further fade and disappear from the grayworld. The grayworld inhabitants don't know what happens to them after that. This happens to the man, leaving the boy and girl alone.
I recall a scene in which they find a rock pool that has slipped through into the world and have a wonderful time playing in it. When they go back, it's gone, having slipped out of the grayworld again. They also find a tape recorder and try to cheer themselves up by taping themselves singing and generally horsing around.
The girl also fades away. The boy is left on his own and tries to occupy himself by dictating his story onto the tape (this account is meant to be the book so far). He can feel himself fading away and is worried about what's going to happen next.
There is a final chapter in which he says that he's woken to find himself back in his room with the tape recorder and this recording. He has no memory of anything that's gone on and is mystified, not knowing what to think or whether any of this really happened. However, at the end of the tape recording of him telling the story he finds about fifteen seconds of recording of his voice and a girl's voice, singing. I think there was also something else that pointed to the recording being true, but I can't remember what that was.
Anyway, I wasn't wild about the book - it was too creepy a plot for my liking - but, having remembered it, I'm curious about what the title was and who wrote it. Anyone remember it?
The book is told in first person by a boy who's gone through a strange 'fading' process in which people around him pay less and less attention to him (there's a scene near the beginning in which he waits for over an hour, unsuccessfully, to get served in a fast food place as the server keeps forgetting about him and eventually not seeming to hear him when he calls out) and eventually even the things he sees around him fade into gray. He's left wandering through this greyness, unable to contact the normal world.
He eventually finds a couple of other people - I remember there being an old or middle-aged man and a girl around his age (might have been called Maureen? I might have that wrong). Might have been one or two others, don't know. These people don't have an explanation for any of this (and we never do get one) but the man has a theory that whoever is in charge of the universe sometimes forgets about particular people and they get sort of lost through the cracks of reality. This also happens to objects now and again, so the people in the grayworld go out scavenging to see what things they can find. This is how they survive - food and bottled drinks sometimes slip through, though finding enough is an ongoing problem.
It also turns out that people in the grayworld will, after a while, undergo some kind of further fade and disappear from the grayworld. The grayworld inhabitants don't know what happens to them after that. This happens to the man, leaving the boy and girl alone.
I recall a scene in which they find a rock pool that has slipped through into the world and have a wonderful time playing in it. When they go back, it's gone, having slipped out of the grayworld again. They also find a tape recorder and try to cheer themselves up by taping themselves singing and generally horsing around.
The girl also fades away. The boy is left on his own and tries to occupy himself by dictating his story onto the tape (this account is meant to be the book so far). He can feel himself fading away and is worried about what's going to happen next.
There is a final chapter in which he says that he's woken to find himself back in his room with the tape recorder and this recording. He has no memory of anything that's gone on and is mystified, not knowing what to think or whether any of this really happened. However, at the end of the tape recording of him telling the story he finds about fifteen seconds of recording of his voice and a girl's voice, singing. I think there was also something else that pointed to the recording being true, but I can't remember what that was.
Anyway, I wasn't wild about the book - it was too creepy a plot for my liking - but, having remembered it, I'm curious about what the title was and who wrote it. Anyone remember it?
