Pfeffer, Susan Beth: The Dead & The Gone
The Dead & the Gone (2008)
Written by: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Genre: YA/Science Fiction
Pages: 308 (Trade Paperback)
Series: Book Two
Why I Read It: I loved Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It and couldn't wait to get my hands on the sequel, The Dead and the Gone. But I had to wait: I had the first book in trade paperback, and for whatever reason, it took the publishers a couple years before releasing the sequel in trade too. Once it was released, I was in my no-buying spell, so the book stayed on my wish list until Christmas, when a very sweet Christmas fairy got it for me. What a surprise! I decided to read it now simply because it's following my self-imposed reading order: it's a sequel of something I've already read, and it's going in alphabetical order. Yes, I'm silly.
The premise: ganked from author's website: Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event -- an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales. When Alex's parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland, and food and aid dwindle. With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities.
Review style: The usual: what I liked and what I didn't. Unfortunately, there's a lot I didn't like about this book, which is always a shame when 1) you loved the previous book in the series and 2) the book was a gift. Spoilers, yes, so skip to "My Rating" if you want to remain unspoiled. :) Everyone else, onward!
Thumbs Up: I'll give credit where credit is due: it's not often in YA the protagonist is a boy, let alone a minority. Now maybe it's out there and I'm just reading the wrong books, but I really appreciated the different lifestyle we saw not just because the protagonist was a boy, but because he was Puerto Rican, as are--obviously--his sisters.
Also a plus (for some readers) is that there's no romantic subplot of any kind. Alex doesn't have any crushes or girls he's trying to impress. No, instead there's the focus on friendship and family (there's a really, really, really fantastic chapter about Julie's birthday, and if that scene doesn't encompass what this story's about, I don't know what does). And while it didn't work for me, seeing how religion plays a role in the story (not in a supernatural sort of way, but in a "this is what real people turn to" sort of way), was kind of nice. Not that I don't have criticisms of it, mind you, but I think for readers who want to see more portrayals of people of faith in fiction, let alone YA, those readers might find themselves pleased with this book.
The book's pace picks up about halfway, and I don't know if it's because I've gotten used to the style of this particular book or if I'd grown ambivalent or what, but the story reads faster the further you get in.
Thumbs Down: Oh, boy. I will not rant-I will not rant-I will not rant…
Let me get the harshest thing I have to say OUT of the way: if my grad school mentors (who specialize in reading and writing popular fiction: science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, romance, YA, etc) had gotten this manuscript as a thesis draft, I would be shocked if they passed it. Not because Pfeffer can't put a sentence together, because she can. And she's got some really nice humanizing moments in the book (see above). But this reads like an amateur manuscript, the bones of a story that needs a bit more fleshing out before being shopped around.
For starters, there's little to no sensory description. Short of sight, I never get a sense of smell, taste or texture. We're told it's cold and we see the piles of snow, but we never feel it. We imagine the air stinks or are told it smells bad, but I'm never really bowled over by description that makes me glad I'm not in the scene. Hell, even as far as SIGHT goes, Alex barely looks at the moon, and that's what's caused this whole mess! For as much time Alex spends outside, why don't we see more of the moon? Let me SEE how close it is in the sky, let the imagination and horror and blame run wild, you know? That's got to be a frightening image anywhere, but in a big city like NYC? COME ON! Don't let the cover tell the story for you!
And let's talk about the moon: there was absolutely no build-up, no tension to what's about to happen. Maybe that's sort of fair: maybe some people really were oblivious to the news and what COULD happen that one day they woke up and the world was falling apart. But given that Alex is a student, I would've imagined his classes would've been talking about the comet, you know? Maybe that's the trick Pfeffer used in the first book, Life As We Knew It (it's been a while since I read the book), but I feel Pfeffer relied too much on the tension and build-up of the first book to even bother showing it again from someone else's POV. And that, to me, is a cheat.
But I'll grant this: it's been a WHILE since I've read Life As We Knew It. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I seem to remember more tension. Here, we've got nothing. And we should've gotten something. This book can easily be read independent of Life As We Knew It, but it's unfair that new readers to this series really don't get to experience the wonder then horror of what's happening: instead, Pfeffer jumps straight to survival, which is fine, but it loses some of its edge without seeing and experiencing what caused everything to begin with.
I also found the lack of first person POV very distancing. I couldn't relate to Alex the same way I could Miranda, and yes, let me just go ahead and say there's the fact that I'm female and more likely to relate to the first book because the narrator there is female and it's written in diary format. Woot for similarities and all that jazz. BUT!!! Part of the pact of writing spec fiction (of any fiction) is to make any character relatable to any reader, regardless of class and background and ethnicity and sexuality. This is especially true for alien creatures. So while I don't have the experience of growing up as a teenage, Puerto Rican boy, I should be able to relate to his fear for his family, the desire to prove he can handle it all, and the need to turn to higher powers when the going gets tough. It shouldn't be that hard. But instead, Pfeffer's choice of POV has me watching everything as through a lens rather than experiencing them through Alex himself. I would have an easier time understanding (while not condoning) Alex's behavior if I really saw him as part of the family unit (we probably should've met the parents before the shit hit the fan, so we could see Alex before and after) instead of simply inhabiting simplistic stereotypes. Family roles are far too traditional for my taste (Alex can't do chores or anything: it's his sisters who cook, clean, etc), and Alex relies far too heavily on "I'm the man, that's why!" when he's telling his sisters what to do. It'd be a wee bit more sympathetic if we'd seen his father in that role before the father went missing, but as it stands, Alex is a parrot not of his father, but of a stereotype, and it falls flat despite his good intentions of protecting his sisters. And when Alex slapped Julie, ooh boy. Sure, he knows he was wrong, but it still rang really false.
I had a really tough time accepting the presentation of religion as well. It felt so . . . trite. Not genuine faith, and trust me, I've read wonderful books that focus on characters with genuine faith. This felt false to me . . . if not false, then superficial. Yes, superficial. It's like sitting down and trying to think of the most obnoxious thing a clergy might say in a certain situation (Father Mulrooney on page 53: Look for inspiration in the lives of the early Christian martyrs . . . They marched bravely to their deaths, sure in the knowledge of life everlasting), and while certain characters did fight back against such statements, rarely did I feel a true moment of Christian kindness, save for perhaps the end. And not all examples of clergy were trite, I will say that, but I still found the treatment of faith and religion too superficial to be satisfying.
There's lots of other things that just had me rolling my eyes, things that characters say but that make no sense, or even worse, when Alex would make plans for his sisters but not tell them all about it. The scene where he's packing for Bri was ridiculous, because he's not wholly sure what to pack, and can't even figure out which is her toothbrush, so he just shoves them all in her luggage. Seriously, how hard would it have been to give her the news so she could accept it and maybe pack for herself? He took this on because he thought he was supposed to be a man? Ugh.
Their use of the elevator when the power was on was downright stupid, and they paid for that stupidity. I can't say I felt bad about that either, but I wish there'd been more apprehension about using it when the power was on, more debate about how unreliable the power was and how worried they were that they might get stuck, you know?
My lack of knowledge about NYC's geography and layout also had me raising my eyebrows. I had no idea the city was in any way sloped so that certain parts of it would be completely safe from flooding. In fact, even if I were given proof that Pfeffer's speculation could really happen, I'd still have a hard time believing it. But that's me.
I should give Alex a little credit. Given his age and the extreme situation he's in, it makes sense that he's trying to act as he THINKS adults would act when in truth, he's just a scared kid making it up as he goes along. I really should give him credit. And I think, if I had been able to relate to him more, that would've rang through loud and clear, instead of occuring to me as afterthought. I would've LOVED to see this book in the same first-person, diary format, because even though that format has its weaknesses, it would've forced the author to really find Alex's voice, and if she had found it, it would've rang truer for the readers.
My Rating
Below Standard: The book can be read as a stand-alone, and that's good; however, the first book in the series, Life As We Knew It, is a MILLION times better. The lack of first person POV in The Dead & The Gone really distanced me from the characters and story, and the super-traditional family roles and religious overtones ended up distancing me further. I should've liked this book, given that I loved the first so much and the premise is just delicious, and there are very rare moments of sparkle in this book that I found to be quite lovely. But overall, it feels churned out, something so rushed that Pfeffer couldn't even bother with sensory details -- forget smell and touch, we hardly ever even see the MOON, and the MOON is what's causing this mess! I'd recommend Life As We Knew It for a real, emotional reaction of this premise, because while the book isn't perfect, you still really feel for what's happening. Here, not so much, though I think the book does deserve points for a Puerto Rican protagonist who takes care of his family. It certainly gets better as it goes along, but the start was pretty painful for me with all the superficial stereotypes. Had the book not been a gift and if I hadn't loved the previous book so much, I would've not finished this. As it stands, I finished, read reviews for the third book, and promptly decided I'm not going to bother with the third or any others that come out in the series afterwards. Again, it wasn't a waste of time, because there are rare, beautiful moments in this, and the themes of survival and family and friendship are good. But the book needs work to make it really shine, but more than that, it needs more work to make me feel. Call me heartless, but there just wasn't much to feel from in this installment.
However, I do want to thank my Christmas Fairy very much for a copy of this book. I'm really glad I got to read it, even though it didn't come close to expectations. :)
Cover Commentary: Actually, it was this book and this cover that introduced me to the series. I love the large moon, the blues and greens hanging over what's supposed to be New York City (though I wish the picture was a more recognizable one of NYC, because as it stands, it just looks like a generic city). Gorgeous cover: always eye-catching.
Next up: That's debatable, but probably Soul Hunt by Margaret Ronald