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“The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?”
Man. I don't even know where to being with this one. I knew absolutely nothing about the story going in. All I knew was that were "mildly post-apocalyptic" themes. That's it. I think that's what made this story such a thrill ride for me. I will try to keep this as spoiler free as possible, although with this story, the jumping back and forth with different timelines can offer hints into certain plot points.
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“But these thoughts broke apart in his head and were replaced by strange fragments: This is my soul and the world unwinding, this is my heart in the still winter air.”
Before I talk about the storyline, let me take a moment to sing the praises of Mandel's writing. This is the only book of hers I read, and if her other titles are even a smidgen similar to this, I'm in love already. One of my all-time favorite authors is Neil Gaiman. He has this profound gift to make the most mundane aspects of life and writes about them with such a flourish and natural knack for adding a touch of whimsy suddenly the dull and lifeless become somehow lyrical and fascinating. That's something Mandel nails as well. Most of the stand out scenes in this book is when characters are in complete solitude. One such moment is when Jeevan, who just had a life-altering moment, is walking alone through Chicago in snowstorm. It's such a simple premise, but the picture she paints of a man alone with his thoughts, surrounded by the silence of a winter snowfall. It's an oddly reflective moment in time, certainly not the most exciting in the book by far, but it was just so human. And that was just in the first thirty pages. There are multiple storylines that take place in different decades, but Mandel brilliantly weaves them in and out, tying the characters together in a profound tangle of missed connections and fleeting moments.
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“Survival might be insufficient, she’d told Dieter in late-night arguments, but on the other hand, so was Shakespeare.”
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When the book begins, we are introduced to Jeevan, who is out for what we can assume is a lovely date night to a production of King Lear when tragedy strikes. Again, this is the first ten pages, but even then I don't want to spoil anything. Jeevan meets a small girl who was a bit player in the play named Kirsten, who's life is later documented after the blight as she herself is a traveling actor of a Shakespeare company. We are transported in time through the leading man of the play's life before that fateful night, Jeevan's sudden realization of the pending doom of the sickness running rampant through the city, and Kirsten's survival with rapidly fading memories of the world before. Usually, I'm not a fan of the whole jumping storylines and contrived plot details thing. I like to have a specific cast of characters with a concise arc to follow and track both the plot and development. I become very attached to fictional characters, you see. Something that has plagued me since childhood. (Still considering therapy for a few unreasonable deaths of some of my most beloved.) However, the cleverness that Mandel utilizes to entwine the lives of these briefly connected strangers is so seamless and coherent, the reader hardly notices the jumps.
But can you really have good post-apocalyptic stories without zombies or a sprawling desert landscape with vehicles with welded spikes and a guy with a guitar that blows fire?! Short answer, and possibly disappointing for some of you, yes, you very much can. I am a sucker for anything post-apocalyptic; the Fallout games, Mad Max, The Walking Dead, that episode of Twilight Zone where the guy's glasses break, anything. I love to see how humans adapt when their world is taken away from them and the new goal of the day-to-day is simply to survive. We will see the darkness of people becoming violent offenders and looters, but you will also see people band together, forming new societies and coming together with each other and making connections they may not have ever considered under different circumstances. I would say this book takes a more Book of Eli approach (a movie I consider to be grossly underrated and solidifies Gary Whitta's genius behind the lens). The "apocalypse" we see here happens after a flu turned pandemic wipes out most of the Earth's population. Kirsten, now in her twenties, and her acting troupe have a motto scrawled alongside their travelling caravan that Star Trek fans are sure to recognize: Survival is insufficient. The phrase fits as a theme for the entire book as well and directly relating to each character's narrative. Take Kirsten and her band of actors. Do we really need actors when there's a constant threat of starvation and death? Of course not. One could even argue that we technically don't even need them now. But we appreciate them. We appreciate them for what they offer us; An escape. An escape for our surroundings and troubles, however temporary that break might be. Survival is about more than just finding water and shelter. It's about living.
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“First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.”
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We see Jeevan, shortly after the genesis of the collapse of civilization, in a very unique situation with his brother, who he's been safely confined in his apartment with supplies and equipment, but of course, these resources are not infinite. Both know they'll eventually have to venture into the unknown to seek further aid. We see Arthur, the lead actor in the play on that fateful night, decades before the event, then a struggling actor, throughout his numerous failing marriages, and how a simple act can change not only the person's life, but those around them as well.
I'm an absolute sucker for looking below the surface and seeking out nuances connecting characters to each other. This book is so character driven and so carefully crafted it could've easily been 200 pages longer. But I think one of the main things this book really excels at is simplicity. The plot itself is full of intricacies, but none of them are unnecessary or cloud the plot. Survival as a human is a simple enough thing. We all have Maslow's Hierachy of Needs that gets us by every day. Living is something else entirely. We see characters with their various regrets, emotional hardships, interactions with those around them, all in vastly different circumstances. We can see ourselves, how we react to similar stimuli. We can even theoretically hypothesize how we would react with a sudden catastrophic downfall of the modern world. But the truth is, we simply do not know what tomorrow will bring, for ourselves, for our siblings, our loved ones, but we do know this: survival is insufficient.
