Edan Lepucki

This is the first time I’ve given a book two stars because it was relentlessly dull. I read ‘California’ quickly in the hope that it would eventually do something interesting. Said hope was dashed. What seems to have happened here is that a standard post-apocalyptic family-survival thriller has had everything thrilling about it surgically removed, without anything being inserted to fill the gaps. Thus the characters are flat, the dialogue trite (comparing it with [b:Under the Volcano|31072|Under the Volcano|Malcolm Lowry|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390014193s/31072.jpg|1321805] was painful), the setting bafflingly generic, and the plot predictable and boring. There was quite simply nothing distinctive about the book at all, which is almost impressive when you think about it. The two main characters, a married couple, have been living completely alone in the woods and yet, somehow, their relationship hasn’t become weird in its insularity. Whyever not? I also couldn’t get over how entirely the narrative and world-building refused to acknowledge their historical and spatial specificity. The setting is ostensibly somewhere near Los Angeles, yet it could have been absolutely anywhere. There were no references to what might be happening outside the US, and only vague mentions of how American society came to collapse. Climate change-related extreme weather, it seems like, although of course the term ‘climate change’ is never used. The generic setting is also conveniently pollution-free.

Just over a hundred pages in, the tedious married couple arbitrarily decide that they’ve been entirely alone for long enough so set out for somewhere else. (Their lack of situational awareness and basic geographical knowledge is staggering, incidentally.) They arrive at a settlement which has caught the virulent post-apocalyptic plague of Arbitrary Noun Capitalisation. The names were so unimaginative and po-faced as to be funny: the settlement is called the Land, run by the Group, guarded by the Forms, etc, etc. The residents wash in the Bath, you will be astonished to learn. The apparent leader of this place, Micah, was the most frustrating character, as he displays some of the blatant gaping voids in the narrative. This man is a former domestic terrorist and current pseudo-dictator, planning further terrorist acts in the future. Yet he expresses no political opinions or ideological positions whatsoever. Why is doing any of this? What are his aims? His beliefs? How was he radicalised? Who knows! There are various flashbacks to his schooldays at a dodgy-sounding college called Plank, where he supposedly read Kant. That’s nice, but what did he think about it? All the reader is told is that he believes in ‘containment’, but that philosophy isn’t explained any further. In short, he’s the most boring terrorist ever.

I also have many questions about this setup they call ‘the Land’:

- Why don’t you have proper maps?
- Where are your reference books? Surely you’ve got some useful non-fiction on things like beekeeping, food preservation, etc?
- Why don’t you keep goats?
- Why aren’t more of you ill? You have no access to post-18th century medicine!
- Why do you call the guys on horses who raid your settlement ‘Pirates’? They’re clearly bandits. Or isn’t there a more Los Angeles-specific term for gangs of thugs you could use?
- Where are you getting your clothes from?
- Why, for the love of little baby rabbits, are you using giant decorative spikes made of garbage as defenses? Let me tell you about an exciting new invention called WALLS.

I got the impression I was expected to care about the main couple. It should be pretty clear by now that I did not. There was no substance to their romance. This sort of thing was very trying:

When Cal was a little boy, his mother had told him that someday his true love would seem different from everyone else in the world. “Like a bright red car in a sea of jalopies,” she’d said. It struck him that, although his mother had not been in love with his father, nor with her various long-term boyfriends, she’d been right. This was exactly how Cal felt, looking at his wife. His red car.

If I’m reading this right, true love is like remembering where you parked.

Mean as it feels to say this about a first novel, I wanted to like ‘California’ but it gave me nothing to like. My main sentiment upon finishing it was, "This will free up a space on my library card." So here are some post-apocalyptic novels that I suggest reading instead: [b:Blindness|2526|Blindness|José Saramago|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327866409s/2526.jpg|3213039] by Jose Saramago, [b:Station Eleven|20170404|Station Eleven|Emily St. John Mandel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451446835s/20170404.jpg|28098716] by Emily St John Mandel, [b:The Hearing Trumpet|46987|The Hearing Trumpet|Leonora Carrington|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1336273089s/46987.jpg|2246210] by Leonora Carrington, [b:The Transmigration of Bodies|31117054|The Transmigration of Bodies|Yuri Herrera|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1468456473s/31117054.jpg|23419168] by Yuri Herrera, [b:Dream London|17571913|Dream London|Tony Ballantyne|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1376474374s/17571913.jpg|24286314] by Tony Ballantyne, [b:The Testimony|13517758|The Testimony|James Smythe|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1333648264s/13517758.jpg|19076345] by James Smythe, [b:After London: or, Wild England|2220037|After London or, Wild England|Richard Jefferies|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348221574s/2220037.jpg|905982] by Richard Jefferies, [b:The Last Man|966835|The Last Man|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1392984325s/966835.jpg|835097] by Mary Shelley, [b:On the Beach|38180|On the Beach|Nevil Shute|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327943327s/38180.jpg|963772] by Nevil Shute, [b:The Carhullan Army|777570|The Carhullan Army|Sarah Hall|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328194455s/777570.jpg|3798847] by Sarah Hall, and [b:The Power|29751398|The Power|Naomi Alderman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462814013s/29751398.jpg|50108451] by Naomi Alderman.… (more)

What I liked most about 'There's No Place Like Home' was the focus on the way thirteen-year-old Vic's perception of her situation and her relationships changed over the course of the story. The story is set in a near future America where climate change has made large portions of the USA uninhabitable and where Vic's generation, born after the major changes hit, are, for reasons unknown, perpetually stuck in prepubescence. There are lots of intriguing details about climate change and its effects on daily life but I liked that while these details provided an essential context for the story, they weren't allowed to dominate it.

The heart of the story lay in Vic's reassessment of her relationship with her parents. Initially, Vic comes across as a Daddy's Girl. He has been her teacher and her friend and was the person that she most loved and admired. Until, in the early pages of the story, he kills himself.

Vic needs to understand why he did this. She needs to grieve. She needs to rebuild her relationship with her mother. Most of all, she needs to find a way to earn enough money to get herself and her mother out of the financial hole her father's death has left them in.

As the story progresses, Vic comes to realise how poorly her father had been coping with the reality of the world that she has grown up in.

He was an educated man who was constantly mourning the loss of the world as it used to be, forecasting the inevitable doom of the human race and disparaging the unprincipled things that people were doing to survive.

It takes Vic a while to see that this worldview was a sign of weakness rather than wisdom. Vic looks at her world as it is, acknowledges the discomforts and the personal challenges but still sees beauty in the world and has a desire to go on living.

By the end of the story, Vic has accepted three things: by committing suicide, the power of her father's voice in her head has been nullified; her mother is and always has been, the stronger parent and Vic's future, such as it is, is hers to build.

'There's No Place Like Home' took me a little over an hour to listen to but, in that time, I got to see a plausible near-future and got to meet the women who were finding a way to cope with it. To me, that felt like time well spent.… (more)

I'm Exhausted, Grossed Out, and Confused

CW: Covid, Animal Abuse (Neglect and fears of death)

I don't even know where to start with this. I nearly DNF'd early on as the protagonist's initial interaction and thoughts about the antagonist caused Lynx/ Axe Africa and Kraft Cheese to emit from my tablet. This is my biggest confusion about the story -- both main characters are awful and truly unpleasant to spend any time with (beyond human empathy for health and pandemic stuff). The protagonist has a John Green/ one of his characters energy with a really creepy and kinda pathetic vibe (I get that he's been through a lot, but the Nice Guy creep baby boy energy is palpable) and the antagonist is pretty much manic pixie dream-come-nightmare girl. It's either brilliant or awful characterisation, but I can't tell. Regardless, peering into this window into their lives left me knackered and uncomfortable, so good job? Maybe?

Stories don't always have to have a political or philosophical perspective, but writing about Covid during the height of the pandemic about people flaunting the rules and an immuno-compromised person seemingly being portrayed as hysterical for being concerned doesn't feel great. Honestly, as someone whose partner and herself are both immuno-compromised and forced to maintain a certain level of eternal lockdown, this also hits different.

I have seen other reviews complain about threads not tied off and this is something I consistently see with short stories. Sometimes I agree, but more often than not and I this case the unanswered questions and ambiguity the reader is left with are the same as the protagonist. They are the narrator and sometimes it's effective to have the reader not know more than the narrator and/ or protagonist. In this case, without really spoilering anything, there is a level of mystery, confusion, and simple lack of information about a character that makes not knowing their actions. Actions, which can be plausibly denied by mundane means.

This was an unpleasant story and I don't know if I hated it or simply didn't enjoy it, so I can't recommend it. The quality of the prose and performance were both great nonetheless.… (more)