Meridian One Forty-Four

by Meg Files

Book Overview

A young woman and her lover are scuba diving on an old sunken warship off a Pacific island when the world above them on the surface turns into a monstrous fireball. The sunken wreck shudders and tips.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0939149877
• ISBN13: 9780939149872
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Nice book

This book is mostly exciting. The writing is superb and the plot is unique. I thought it was going to be another "On The Beach," but I was wrong. I had a little problem with all the past to present segues and since I was most interested in the present story got a bit bored. But it is a worthwhile read.

Fiction that forecasted current events

In this excellent apocalyptic story, writting during a time when the Soviet Union was supposedly the worst threat to Liberty and the American way of life, Files supposed the tables had turned, that the Middle East would become the source of annihilation. Too close for comfort in these turbulent times, that dis-ease with world events plays out in the ultimate disaster novel. Through the miasma of human hubris that wipes out life as we know it, the heroine discovers herself, comes to grips with her past, and defines her future. The novel is fluid and brilliant, tightly woven, touching to the end. Non-stop flight. Four thumbs-up.

A superb story of survival

Meg Files writes great fiction: important, moving, and entertaining. This book is full of high-stakes danger, choices, and consequence. It's bravely written, scary, page-turning novel with a strong and admirable young woman (and dog) braving the worst odds, and surviving.

Of all the reviews for Meridian 144, you picked this one?

When my boss, Meg Files, told me that she'd found her book online, I was excited. Then she told me which review you chose to use. There were several good reviews, and only one bad one. You chose the bad one. I'd like to offer some excerpts from two other reviews. From the Los Angeles Times, Monday, October 14, 1991, reviewer Carolyn See. "This is a fine, sad, interesting novel. And lest anyone think that it's out of date, Files simply has changed all the Russians to Arabs and Jews, so the end of the world scenario plays out quite nicely. This book won't change the world, but it will make you think about it. The novel is aces: Courageous, imaginative, nervy, admirable." From The Bloomsbury Review, January/February 1992, reviewer Anne A. Busch. "[The main character's] mind travels through her childhood and the confines it gives her as an adult.Files paints a poignant portrait of a mother/daughter love/hate relationship. The painful struggles she portrays moved this reader to tears....The author gently weaves [the main character's] mental catharsis with vivid adventure and keeps the reader wanting more....This reader experienced the ups and downs of the character and began to ponder her own relationships with her mother and daughter." As I'm sure you can see from these two brief excerpts, Meg Files's Meridian 144 is not the dull, agonizing book that your chosen reviewer made it out to be. Meg makes readers think, care, and cry about her main character's plight after her world is destroyed.