Just Finished Reading...

48 HBC #4

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

time spent reading: 6 1/2 hours (embarrassing)

time spent blogging: 35 minutes

I'm disappointed in this book. It started out so well that I thought this was going to be the most fun of all the books I've read and then it began to feel more like The Diary Anne Frank: Armageddon. The premise is that a large enough astroid hits the moon hard enough to send the moon out of its natural orbit and pushes it closer to the earth. This sets off a chain of disasters almost immediately. Tsunamis decimate almost all coastline cities, electricity comes and goes, phones lines are down, volcanoes erupt blanketing the atmosphere is ash and smoke, blocking out the sun, and quickly turning an August summer into an August winter. It all sounds terrifying and enthralling but that's the extent of explanation we get from Pfeffer. The rest of the story is rather monotonous, told from the point of view of 16 year old Miranda as she writes in her diary. At first she complains about not having the chance to experience what it would be like to date, then school is no longer an option, and eventually every is one in the same. The temperatures are freezing. They are starving. Surely, the will all die soon.

I was hoping for scientific explanations for this chain reaction of horrific events and to get an idea of what is happening in the world, but even at opportune moments, Pfeffer chooses not to reveal any details. Even as Miranda's mother listens to the radio, the information is thin.

Most of the news was bad, the way it had been last summer. Earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, the litany of natural disasters. There were a few things added the list, though: Flu epidemics and cholera. Famine. Droughts. Ice storms.

The news reporters and top officials don't seem to have any answers, but everyone has a list of the deceased. The president (no doubt Bush Jr. - or as mom calls him "idiot") only says that things are looking up. If that were true, then shouldn't the earthquakes, floods, and volcanoes be over by now? I'm not sure the earth could sustain itself after a year of nonstop natural disasters. No one could survive that.

Even if the news did report something of significance, Miranda and her family don't seem to concerned to hear what they have to say.

It scares me a little that Mom is willing to burn up batteries just to listen to the radio.

Besides not having a clear explanation as to what is going on or why, I was troubled with the actions of some of the characters. Firstly, the family goes on a huge shopping spree stocking up for the end of the world. They come out with at least 6 or so heaping carts of food in just the one trip alone and a week later they already seemed to be starving. What happened to it all so quickly? The mother begins to act irrational, too, getting upset with Miranda for going back to her boy friend to tell him that bags of food are being given away to each household. They all come out with a bag of food, but the mother scolds her saying, "What if they ran out while you went to get him? We need to think only of ourselves right now." Real nice.

The father is no better. The world is ending and he leaves town with his young new wife and their unborn child to head cross country to her parents' place, never to be seen again. He has three kids and he leaves them to fend for themselves alone with their single mother. What real father who loves his kids would do that?

The story ends with no explanation of whether they all die, the planet implodes, or civilization begins to flourish once again. It just ends. I'm going to assume that dinosaurs crawled out from under the earth and ate Miranda and her family.