I've been wanting to read this book for a long while and finally got the chance to for my book club. It's often classified as science fiction which I get, but what's different about this novel is that everything is 100% realistic. It could literally happen tomorrow and that's what makes reading this such a nail biter.
Arthur Leander is a world famous actor who collapses from a heart attack while performing King Lear on stage. His death is not a spoiler, I promise, it happens on page 1. From there readers follow his life (through flashbacks) and the lives of those who crossed paths with him at one point or another. The big catch is that the night of Arthur's death is also the night the world ends. 99% of the population is wiped out. And soon after that anything powered by electricity, gas, or battery dies too. No more air travel, internet, government, or hospitals. We're given details of life 20 years before and after the collapse and bits and pieces in between to form a narrative about art, survival, and civilization.
So, that summary is kind of vague, but I don't want to give anything away. There's quite a few characters to keep track of and it would be better for you to just go read the book rather than me typing out a long summary of each of them! After finishing I realized how there wasn't ever really a main character because the story was told from multiple points-of-view. You know I love stories told from multiple POVs!
This book wasn't what I was expecting when I heard it was dystopian mainly because of all of the flashbacks to before the collapse. There was just as much happening in the pre-collapse narrative as the post-collapse. It made the story more relatable, whereas so much dystopian fiction feels disconnected from my own world. Mandel certainly has a talent for making ordinary characters interesting to read about. There often wasn't anything special about the people in this story, but she had a way of making me sympathize with them and wanting to know what happened to them. I especially loved they way they were all interconnected with one another. It was like this web that spread over decades tying everyone together even if they never knew it.
Like I said above, the disturbing part about this book is that it could happen to us at any moment. Nothing Mandel wrote about was out of the realm of possibility in the world as we know it. In our book club we talked about what skills we would have to offer if we survived what the characters here did. How horrifying would it be to never see your family again, trying to move on while assuming they are probably dead. Would we stay where we are or try to move somewhere more promising? So many questions are raised by the time I finished the book that I can't even begin to answer. I don't even want to think about answering most of them, it's too scary!
There is so much more I could talk about but I think I'm going to leave it at that...hopefully this review is the little taste you need to bite into the book as a whole. Overall, a must read! Although it ends on a hopeful note, it left me a little depressed, so you've been warned!
4/5 Stars
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