Life As We Knew It ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

From Amazon:

Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove. In her journal, Miranda records the events of each desperate day, while she and her family struggle to hold on to their most priceless resource–hope.

The current module of my graduate course places its focus on my favorite of the genres: Fantasy (and science fiction, too, which I’m coming around to.) When I looked over the list of books we’re required to choose from I ran into a problem. I’d already read the majority of them. Life As We Knew It stood out as one of the only ones I hadn’t read, in fact, which would be why I picked it. I had no idea when I sat down with it that it was going to take me daaays to read it.

Let me say this first: There is absolutely nothing wrong with this book. The writing is good, the concept offers up a fantastic hook, and for the most part the characterization is spot-on. When this book was on the middle school’s summer reading list in my town it was the one all of the students wanted. And I know there are a great many bloggers who loved it, too.

So why did I struggle with it so much?

Possibly because Miranda annoyed me. She was a very well developed character in that her emotional responses were honest and appropriate to her situation. My problem with her stemmed from the several screaming, door-slamming fights she had with her mother. There were too many of them, for one, and the reader doesn’t even actually “see” all of them. And beside, I didn’t need those displays of immaturity to make me appreciate the growth of Miranda’s character as her family’s situation worsens. That she could put momentary spurts of jealousy aside, that she knew what needed to be done in the end and did it even though she was scared, that would have been enough for me. The fights just didn’t fully ring true for me and seemed to force a theme unnecessarily. (To be fair, I didn’t love her mother, either, though her character was also well done.)

Another thing that made this a slow read was just the subject matter itself. The bleakness of it. I’m not a big fan of dystopian novels, though there are exceptions, and I don’t want to read about one disaster after another, about a situation rapidly declining with little to no hope of an end in sight. That’s just not what I read for. And I found myself reluctant to return to this book time and again because at a certain point I had just had enough of it. Plus there were things that just didn’t make sense to me (like, for instance, the fact that people were quick to loot homes of the deceased, but never became desperate enough to try to rob someone still living. I would think towards the end that that kind of desperation would have run rampant, but Miranda and her family felt mostly safe in their home from that kind of violence. And also, really? Not one scientist or astronomer had any inkling that the hit might impact the moon more thoroughly?)

I guess it’s good that I read this – as I mentioned earlier, a lot of my young patrons have, and I like to keep up with what they’re reading – but I didn’t really enjoy it.

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