Intriguing premise: what if the Millenium doomsday sayers had been right, and New Year's Eve 1999 had ushered in the arrival of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (plus their latest recruit, Technological Meltdown. I don't know what color horse it would be riding. Cyan/Magenta/Yellow?) In the first story, we are introduced to a young boy whose father has prepared for Millennial meltdown, somewhat haphazardly, by stripping the larder of canned goods, loading the family into the car and driving them to the in-laws' farm in the country. In subsequent stories, we encounter the boy/teenager/man as he deals with the aftermath, which is exactly what his father feared: starvation, extreme climate change, drought, plague, etc. etc.
Some readers have chosen to take this as a novel in short stories -- episodes in the life of the boy, as he clings to life in the brave new world the Millennium ushered in. I don't quite see that linear narrative -- for me, the timeline doesn't work. (For example, a girlfriend, Margot, reappears in two stores, but seems like a very different person in each one.) Instead, I see each story as an alternative possibility for his future, and the future of the world. Here, the teenage boy does a Thelma and Louise with his grandparents, dodging the repressive regime that preserves resources in the countryside by starving the majority of the population barricaded in urban centers. There, the man clings to life, foraging in the desert, as plague turns the survivors feral. There are even two vaguely hopeful, almost utopian scenarios -- one in which a charismatic leader offers hope for the future, at a price. And the final story, in which the main character is working as a tourguide for bucket list tours for people with terminal cancers. His father reappears, in a way that brings the story cycle to a neat closure.
Intriguing, well-written. And, 18 years after December 31, 1999, as we go through our own version of the End Times, offers a disturbing window into the possibility that maybe the doom-sayers only had their timing off.
Some readers have chosen to take this as a novel in short stories -- episodes in the life of the boy, as he clings to life in the brave new world the Millennium ushered in. I don't quite see that linear narrative -- for me, the timeline doesn't work. (For example, a girlfriend, Margot, reappears in two stores, but seems like a very different person in each one.) Instead, I see each story as an alternative possibility for his future, and the future of the world. Here, the teenage boy does a Thelma and Louise with his grandparents, dodging the repressive regime that preserves resources in the countryside by starving the majority of the population barricaded in urban centers. There, the man clings to life, foraging in the desert, as plague turns the survivors feral. There are even two vaguely hopeful, almost utopian scenarios -- one in which a charismatic leader offers hope for the future, at a price. And the final story, in which the main character is working as a tourguide for bucket list tours for people with terminal cancers. His father reappears, in a way that brings the story cycle to a neat closure.
Intriguing, well-written. And, 18 years after December 31, 1999, as we go through our own version of the End Times, offers a disturbing window into the possibility that maybe the doom-sayers only had their timing off.
