the dead and the gone
Susan Beth Pfeffer
Everyone sighs over how cool toys and games are now, and how Kids These Days don't have the capacity to truly appreciate them. I feel that way about this series of books sometimes (a third one is one its way and no collective name makes this post awkward to write). When I was the target demographic, I read stuff like On the Beach and WarDay and Lord of the Flies (which is applicable here, I think) voraciously and repeatedly. Apocalyptic lit that was plausible...because somehow, anything with magic scanned as silly in my thirteen year old brain.
Anyway. Most will call this a sequel to Life As We Knew It (mentioned briefly by me here last year) but I think it's more accurate to use a term my sister taught me -- it's a sidequel. The two books cover about the same time chronologically, but you really should read Life As We Knew It first. (Good thing it comes out in paperback at about the same time.)
In short, the series is about what would happen if an asteroid knocked the moon out of its current orbit. In short, things would not go well. Devastation along the coasts, new volcanoes which in turn darken the atmosphere which in turn kills all the crops and starts winter early, you get the idea. But rather than having omniscient narration as plenty of apocalyptic-lit does, both books are from the points of view of teenagers. Life As We Knew It is told by a Pennsylvania girl, Miranda, who lucks out enough (though not in a Mary Sue way) to be able to talk about the outside world, and about her family's own desperation.
the dead and the gone's main character is a boy named Alex Morales, who's a hardworking senior at a Catholic school in Manhattan. When the asteroid hits the moon -- no one expected it to be anything but a pretty sight in the sky, due to a miscalculation -- he's at home with his two younger sisters. His mom is at work, his dad is at his grandmother's funeral in Puerto Rico, his older brother is in the military. I refuse to spoil very much for prospective readers, but Alex isn't nearly as lucky as Miranda. This should please everyone who reads this kind of stuff and mentally compiles a body count, myself included. There might not be any Randall Flagg or zombies or catastrophic biotechnology error or mushroom clouds, but guts? Prepare to be wrenched. Also, you'll never think of Yankee Stadium quite the same way again.
Something that surprised me, and also surprised me in its effectiveness: When I heard there was going to be another book in the Life As We Know It universe and that it would be set in New York, I fully expected it to be either full throttle reportage of a world gone horribly awry, or something akin to Cloverfield in which we get a shot of people running down Broadway just ahead of a giant wave with a sinister Giant Moon in the sky above. If anything, the dead and the gone is told at a closer narrative range than Life As We Know It. It asks What stuff do you loot from a corpse you find on the street, sure. But more prominently, it asks What will Alex do from day to day because, well, he has to? Plenty of other books pay lip service to the question, but relatively few explore it with any detail.
Even if you aren't a lifelong bleak-and-mundane junkie like myself, I strongly recommend you check out Pfeffer's blog. In an Internet world where a lot of fiction writers are very cagey about their plans and their progress with their work, she's an extremely candid and engaging read. As I said, a third book is in the works -- one that is, in fact, a sequel of sorts -- and the posts in which she describes the decisions she faces as its creator have been some of the most interesting stuff I've read online all winter.
Recent Comments