Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Life as we knew it, by Susan Beth Pfeffer
The Last Survivors Series, book 2
reviewed by Sue
It’s almost the end of Miranda’s sophomore year in high school, and her journal reflects the busy life of a typical teenager: conversations with friends, fights with mom, and fervent hopes for a driver’s license. When Miranda first begins hearing the reports of a meteor on a collision course with the moon, it hardly seems worth a mention in her diary. But after the meteor hits, pushing the moon off its axis and causing worldwide earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, all the things Miranda used to take for granted begin to disappear.
This frighteningly realistic tale was rec’d to me quite a while back on the Twitter. I’m really digging the Dystopian YA stuff lately and after reading the superbly zombified book Ashes, I was in the mood for more somewhat post-apocalyptic stuff. When I was scanning through my Nook options one night I saw this title and remembered it from my twitter and bought it.
Miranda is a typical teenager; she has a crush on a local ice-skater and spends lots of time on the message boards dedicated to him. She has her good group of friends, even though one turned into a perceived “easy” girl and the other started a monogamous relationship with Jesus, so they aren’t as close as before. She isn’t sure how to feel about her step-mom having a baby, she has a baseball obsessed younger brother Johnny and a perfect/hero/super-duper big brother in college named Matt. They all live with their novelist mother, who is dating a doctor named Peter. Okay, well, maybe Miranda isn’t typical but still. You get the gist of it.
Everything starts out pretty innocuously, with very little discussion about what is to come. The reader has a chance to get to know Miranda and her family and surroundings first before we even find out that anything bad might happen. There is an asteroid projected to hit the moon, which they do all the time, but this time it’ll be visible to the naked eye so it’s a big deal. Miranda gives us very little build up about it, and almost discusses it with bored detachment. Until the night the asteroid hits the moon…and knocks it completely out of orbit and alarmingly close to Earth. Then everything changes.
Spoilers ahead: read at your own risk
From there the book teeter-totters between fast paced and frantic to somber and heartbreaking. Miranda and her family have it quite well at the beginning, but it isn’t until the volcanic ash turns a typical summer into an arctic winter that things take a huge turn for the worse. The relationships in her small family go back and forth as their mood and food supply dwindles. Miranda and her mom have a love/hate relationship that is extremely realistic. Life as we knew it is told in first person from Miranda’s point of view, as she records daily events in her diary. The family makes an admirable stand against the harsh conditions, even while their health and stockpiles plummet. The emotions in the book are very topsy turvy, and we feel everything Miranda does.
Unfortunately, there were a few things that didn’t sit well with me. There were several things in this book that stuck out to and I couldn’t shake them. Granted this is a work of fiction, but I feel like the author’s obvious prejudices showed through in the writing of this book. I was a little uneasy about the way the character of Megan was portrayed as a crazy Christian who couldn’t wait to die, though the conversations between Miranda and Megan, I thought, were quite realistic. I also didn’t like a scene in which Miranda goes to speak to Megan’s pastor. I am hoping certain parts of that scene come into play later in the series, otherwise the undertones don’t sit well with me.
Another thing that bothered me was a random comment one of the characters says when discussing the Dinosaurs. I guess some people believe that Dinosaurs all evolved into birds. Which, hey whatever flips your flop. I was just a bit irritated that one of the adult characters in the book was making a comment and declaring this as absolute fact. I tried to do a little research on the topic and found very little to support this claim as 100% fact.
And lastly, I think the author hated George W. Bush. It was shoved in my face every time there was an opportunity. I have lots of friend who severely disliked the man, but you know…he’s not the President anymore so we can stop having characters talk about how he is an evil hoarding bastard who gets off when other people are suffering.
Why do those things bother me? In adult fiction they don’t. Diff’rent strokes and all. However, in YA Fiction this kind of thing irritates me. I feel like (and I’ve chatted with several other avid readers and writers who agreed with me) certain author prejudices should be left at the door when it comes to writing, especially YA fiction. Adults are grown and have a good sense of their ideals and opinions and know how to stand up for them when others disagree. Teens and kids often don’t. When author prejudices come through a book so transparently, it just feels wrong. Like the author is trying to push their beliefs on someone who isn’t old enough to understand that disagreeing with others is okay. Although, I have to give the author props for how she wrote the character Megan. Megan didn’t give a crap what other people thought. She stuck to her guns and still made sure people knew she loved them. So there was that bit of redemption.
Now, climbing down the ladder from my soapbox, I have to say I really did enjoy the book. It was well written and the “Dear Diary” style was a refreshing change to some of the things I’ve been reading lately. The more I read, the more I dig first person POV and it felt like we really could be Miranda. My grievances stayed with me, but weren’t so bad that I couldn’t look past it and enjoy the story being told.
Overall, I give Life As We Knew It a 3.5 out of 5 Moons
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