emma's Reviews > The Ones We're Meant to Find

How do you write a post-apocalyptic novel when the world is on fire?

Everybody else had it easy. Philip K. Dick could write books about authoritarian governments and robots taking over and have them still be fun because his audience didn't have little rectangles with human names in their homes, CONSTANTLY LISTENING. George Orwell could write about...also authoritarian governments because Edward Snowden was not yet a twinkle in his parents' eye, and the NSA (or whatever its British equivalent) was not yet a twinkle in an evil gross bureuacrat's.

And also, none of them were writing about climate change.

I'll read about crazy governments making children kill each other for national entertainment, because that's obviously cool and interesting. I'll read about crazy governments making children join castes based on a singular personality trait, because that's relatively cool and interesting. I'll read PKD and Orwell, because even when they aren't cool and interesting I'm a sucker for someone saying something is a must read.

But I'm at a point where I don't want to read about global pandemics from flu-like illnesses, and I DEFINITELY don't want to read about global warming. Because both are real and both are everyone's day to day life and no one can forget about them for a second anyway.

There's something escapist about reading about POST-apocalyptic books. We're in the apocalypse now (I haven't seen that movie or else I'd make a cool reference), so reading about things being worse casts things into a kind of sharp relief sometimes.

But this was not escapist, because I was reading it when it was 100 degrees outside and wildfire smoke was making everything fuzzy, and now I'm reviewing it days after flooding shut my city down.

If I'm going to read about climate change, it turns out, I don't want to read a fictionalized look at how everything is terrible and it will never get better, only worse. I want to read long essays in esteemed publications, or I want to read books like Sally Rooney's latest, which fill me with even a little bit of hope.

This was well done, and everything. I just hated every second of reading it.

Bottom line: Everything is terrible! I don't read to be reminded of that.

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pre-review

no thoughts head empty just "pretty girls on cover"

update: probably no book could live up to that cover. but this one certainly did not.

review to come / 3 stars