This book packs a punch. It was yet another year me on a cruise ship sitting by the pool wondering if I’m about to bawl in public. Yeah, that kind of punch.
We took three Klune works on vacation with us: The House in the Cerulean Sea, In the Lives of Puppets and this one. Tim read them in that order and it shook his world. He asked me what was wrong with Klune (they got progressively melancholic and sad) and I told him I had no idea. So after I finished Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I decided to read them in reverse order and I was not prepared.
This novella is just over 160 pages and it touches on so many aspects of humanity as the world is coming to an end. It’s not ending theoretically, a massive black hole has spawned in the galaxy and is slowly nearing earth and swallowing everything as it approaches. The population has known about it for at least two years and the protagonists Don and Rodney, an elderly married couple, have one last trip they want to take before the world ends.
As they trek across most of the United States they encounter the best and the worst of humanity. There are denialists and murderous sociopaths as well as those embracing the end and finding freedom. My favorite were Becca and Amy, a young queer couple that approach Rodney and Don and ask about their relationship and their history. It was just so moving to hear an oral tradition of the LGBT rights movement in the US being shared with a young queer couple that knew nothing of their history, but survived their own story.
I won’t tell you why they’re making their journey, you can guess pretty early on in the novella, but it’s more beautiful if you just follow the unfolding of it. The last 2-3 chapters were hard to read, but still incredibly beautifully written and the very last scene felt perfect to me. I wanted to bawl, but I also felt that there was no other way it could end and that brief moment where it happened or they imagined it happened was so sweet and a bright spot as they experienced the end of the world.
Recommendation: 100% read it! But don’t go into it lightly and be prepared to have a lot of strong feelings that run the full spectrum from terror and horror to extremes of happiness. Tim spoiled a couple of things for me because I wasn’t 100% sure I’d get to the book, but after reading it we talked through the book and it included actual “WTF is wrong with people” and “omfg it’s like looking in a mirror and seeing the future” (not of the world ending, but of Tim and I growing old together) 😀 Every single character was well written, including all the minor ones, and it felt like you got to know their entire story in the very brief time that Rodney and Don spent with them.
Opening Line: “Don switched off the television.”
Closing Line: “And for the last time, a dying world laughed with them.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)
