Last Last Chance

by Fiona Maazel

Last Last Chance , Fiona Maazel’s first novel, is one of the most distinctive debuts of recent a rollicking comic tale about (in no particular order) plague, narcotics recovery, and reincarnation.

A lethal strain of virus vanishes from a lab in Washington, D.C., unleashing an epidemic—and the world thinks Lucy Clark’s dead father is to blame. The plague may be the least of Lucy’s problems. There’s her mother, Isifrid, a peddler of high-end hatwear who’s also a crackhead and pagan theologist. There’s her twelve-year-old half sister, Hannah, obsessed with disease and Christian fundamentalism; and Lucy’s lover, Stanley, who’s hell-bent on finding a womb for his dead wife’s frozen eggs. Lastly, there’s her grandmother Agneth, who believes in reincarnation (and who turns out to be right). And then there is Lucy herself, whose wise, warped approach to life makes her an ideal guide to love among the ruins. Romping across the country, from Southern California to the Texas desert to rural Pennsylvania and New York City, Lucy tries to surmount her drug addiction and to keep her family intact—and tells us, uproariously, all about it.

Last Last Chance is a novel about survival and recovery, opportunity and despair, and, finally, love and faith in an age of anxiety. It introduces Maazel as a new writer of phenomenal gifts.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 18, 2008

About the author

Fiona Maazel is the author of the novels LAST LAST CHANCE (FSG, 2008), WOKE UP LONELY (Graywolf, 2013) and A LITTLE MORE HUMAN (Graywolf 2017). She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Reviews

[Anastasia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Last Last Chance is about Lucy, who is a drug addict. Her dad worked for the CDC creating the plague. When a vial goes missing her dad is accused of stealing it. The world is waiting to see if the plague will be released when we start the story.

I love books about plague, or the apocalypse in general so I was really looking forward to reading this. But it wasn't actually about the plague. It was about an insufferable drug addict who just keeps using drugs and making excuses for it. That's not a reason not to like a book, I know, characters don't have to be likable. But it sure bugged the hell out of me. She didn't change or even learn anything the whole time.

It was also confusing, it had some random stuff about past lives and would start chapters switching the voice to other characters past lives speaking through them. It didn't further the plot or even make for an interesting read. I started just skimming those chapters near the end. I seriously considered not finishing the book, but I muscled through hoping it would get better.

It didn't.

I hate to give a bad review. It's hard to be a writer and just getting published is a big deal. But I could not bring myself to like this book.

In the end, I do not recommend this one. If you want a story about the plague, go read The Stand. It's especially scary during the cold season.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though not the typical type of book I pick up, Fiona Maazel's debut is definitely going on my list of top fiction books. It's a good book to start with, but considering it's a debut, I'm that much more impressed.
The first thing that struck me is the depth of Maazel's characters. The protagonist, Lucy, spends the length of the novel dealing with the suicide of her father, her social standing as an outcast, and her drug addictions. Her family members- a crack addict mother, a fundamentalist sister- are also three dimensional, despite being slightly overdone at times. A good writer can make you feel sympathy for a character you may not relate to, so even those with no history of dealing with addiction can see the struggle the characters go through and be pulled in by it.
Maazel's sardonic sense of humor and mature style grabbed me from the very beginning. Her voice is similar to the type I like most- humorous but sarcastically so at times, dark and gritty but with a light thrown in somewhere. This combines with the depth of character and subject to create a fiction that is also art.
The book has few flaws, and even those might be products of my own prejudices. For example, I have a dislike of finding a spiritual way out of addiction. I strongly believe that addiction can be overcome without it. I was hoping Maazel would find a unique way of looking at the issue of sobriety, though I do like Lucy's view of the subject. Her cynical side causes her to doubt the existence of anything spiritual that could give her aid. To avoid giving anything away, I'll just say you're not entirely convinced even at the end that she has beaten the addiction- at least as much as anyone can beat an addiction. My only other criticism of the novel is simply a wish to see her sister's character explored some more.
Maazel's characterization and style really blend with a good story to create something great. I definitely recommend Last Last Chance to readers of "gritty" fiction.

This book was provided to me by Librarything Early Reviewers in exchange for an unbiased review.

[Bint Arab · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lucy Clark is not a drug addict. She's supposed to be one, she says she is one, the author says Lucy is an addict, Lucy even goes to rehab for her addictions during the course of the book, but I never bought it; she just never felt like a drug addict. Her being a drug addict is a prop, something that's supposed to make other things make more sense (it didn't) but not something that has any reality outside of that role. I wasn't expecting a stereotype of a strung-out, lank-haired, doorway-occupying, toothless junkie. Nor was I looking for psychedelic trips and grotesque hallucinations à la Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. I wasn't hoping that Lucy would get her comeuppance as seems to be the standard formula in US ideology about "rich people and their drug addictions." Truth is, I didn't have any expectations at all except for the fact that the author kept mentioning Lucy's addiction as if it was supposed to mean something.

Unfortunately, it didn't.

Nor did the fact of Lucy being filthy rich, having a drug addict for a mother, having a father who committed suicide, having a younger sister who came to hate Lucy, living in a world where bio-terrorists were trying to wipe out the US population with an unstoppable lethal virus, or her out-of-the-blue sudden rehabilitation. In fact, many of the things that happen in this book are out-of-the-blue and feel like an act of deus ex machina, not like an organic consequence of anything happening in the book. It all comes out flat as if there is no real force behind it, and hence it feels unbelievable even in the context of a work of fiction. Here's an example: the man that Lucy had hooked up with (sort of accidentally) suddenly declares at an AA meeting that he loves her:

"I've been living with a woman for a year or so now. Before that, I had barely spoken to a woman since my wife died … But this woman I met, she got me excited enough about life to think about actually trying to have a life… Now I just live with this woman and it's fine. I love her."
p. 332

This blind-sided me. I thought, He loves her? Why? And how come I never saw it coming? How come it doesn't feel real? I like to think that I analyze texts pretty well, just as sometimes I'm pretty far off the mark, but honestly the revelation that Stanley loves Lucy felt like the author's desperation to get the plot moving after having gotten stuck in a rut. I think it was Raymond Chandler who advised that authors facing a rut in the story could kick-start it by having someone walk into the room with a gun. This book has lots of moments like this, but they always turn out to be lacking in force or meaning.

Maazel flips between present tense and past in tandem with chapter breaks, but these are not effective switches. I can accept this as a literary device but only if the author makes it work; otherwise it's an affectation.

Perhaps the only positive thing I have to say about this book is that Lucy's voice is distinct. Maazel gives Lucy unique ways of expressing herself and unique thoughts to express, thankfully avoiding clichés but replacing that vice with another: the too clever use of language. It seems to be an end in itself, and it's more distracting and tedious than delightful.

Though most of the narration sticks very closely to Lucy's PoV, there are occasional brief chapters in the PoV of minor characters, namely, the souls which represent the past lives of the main characters. These quick dips into the souls that have been reincarnated as current characters did relieve some of the monotony of the main storyline, and I understand that the title (Last Last Chance) relates these past lives (and their repeating mistakes) with the current ones (and the possibility that they may actually do something right this time). In the end, though, it isn't enough to carry the whole book. It also struck me as pointless when Maazel spent a lot of time on the past lives of a minor character (the Texan seeking help for his uncle) while passing on the chance to introduce us to some major characters' past lives. What was the point there? To reinforce that we're all given the chance to rectify past mistakes but that we persistently repeat those mistakes? Maybe the Texan who consistently (and fatally) underestimated the power of mob panic in his past lives was supposed to contrast with Lucy, who defied the trend of her past lives by living beyond adolescence.

I spent the first third of the book trying to like Lucy's character before finally realizing that I wasn't supposed to like her. I think I was supposed to like her by the end of the book, with admiration for Lucy's determination to forego the pills and face an adulthood of responsibility. Sadly, I didn't feel as if Lucy had made any kind of internal journey at all, not even with "baby" steps. I think this book is supposed to be funny/humorous, but it isn't. The book ends suddenly, almost as if the author just wanted to get the story over with already.

Others have given this book glowing reviews, and you all should read those before judging this book on the basis of my review. But I think this book is very bad. I only was able to finish reading it because I got a review copy from LibraryThing and felt obligated to write a review on it.

~bint

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the news filled with talk of the swine flu, Fiona Maazel's debut novel Last Last Chance, and its storyline of the release of a superplague, seems prescient.

Lucy is a thirty-year-old drug addict with six failed rehab stints behind her. Her mother is a wealthy business owner and crack addict, her twelve-year-old half sister dabbles in disease, cutting herself and fundamental Christianity, and her scientist father committed suicide after a deadly superplague created in the government lab where he worked disappears.

Not exactly a feel-good novel, but one that is brilliantly plotted and written. Maazel states in the author's conversation at the end of the book that she "love(s) the craft of storytelling", and it shows.

She writes sentences that are so amazing, they take your breath away. You simply have to go back and reread and savor them. She states that "every sentence feels like its own universe, and so I think long and hard about how to put that universe together." An example of one of my favorite sentences (and there are many) is "If my mother had a secret life, maybe I could forgive the one she led in front of us."

She also states that Cormac McCarthy is a writer she admires, and while I was reading her book, it put me in mind of him as well, both in the beautifully crafted sentences, and the subject matter of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road. Whereas The Road is post-apocalyptic, Last Last Chance is pre-apocalyptic, and does have an element of gallows humor to it.

There is so much stuffed into this novel, it almost defies description. Characters who have died and been reincarnated, or are waiting for reincarnation, narrate some chapters. This can be confusing at first, but stick with it, and you will be rewarded.

The ravages of drug addiction are compared to the panic and illness of a world plague. The self-absorbed behavior of a drug addict is mirrored by the panic and self preservation that people exhibit when faced with a plague at their doorstep.

The characters are not entirely likeable; indeed it is hard to feel sympathy for people who have much, but still fall into drug (and self) abuse. Yet the author gets you to root for these people. Lucy and her mother attend a drug rehab in Texas, and in group therapy they hear the heartbreaking stories of how some of their fellow residents became drug addicts; it is stark contrast to their own lives.

Maazel manages to keep all her balls in the air, with many settings and characters to keep track of and move along. Her characters, and there are many, seem fully realized, and though you know them well, you leave wanting to know even more about them.

This is a big novel, with much to contemplate and savor. It is a book that does not grab one right away, but once involved, it is something you cannot put down. If you are willing to commit to it, you will be richly rewarded. I highly recommend it and look forward to Maazels' next effort.

[Tom Sands · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't like this book at all. I am sure that it was not meant for a person like me. I choose it since I heard that it involved a situation where a deadly human created plague was stolen from the CDC. I am now very interested in how writers described how the US population would react to a a potential pandemic.

While there was a small amount of what I was looking for, the vast majority of the material was a style of writing that I could not enjoy.

I understand that this is not a book for me and that many people loved it and would love to read it. I can say that I find it annoying that the writer used a very large amount of "five dollar' words that I really don't see as adding any value to the story. I have never used the 'look up' feature on my Kindle as much as I did with this book. I understand that you can use a word that gives a sentence much more context, describe the situation more specifically, and just sound pleasing. Since I was looking up all of these words (at least in the first third of the book), I can say that a large amount of the time the author seemed to just use a word that most people didn't know and tried to make her sound smarter.

[Caroline Lyngen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. An interesting take on what it means to have a chance at life again after being smashed down for years. Nice character arch but could use a bit more humanity within the character. Overall not bad.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last Last Chance is a terrific and moving book. There is something about Fiona Maazel's novels that make me want to interpret and dissect. I suppose I feel that way about every novel I read, but instead of an underlying need this book and Woke Up Lonely both bring that simmer to a boil. It's because there's so much going on in her writing; she doesn't spoon feed everything to the reader. It means it can be complex at times, and requires some effort and trust, but I think that trust is earned and the effort is clearly worth it.

Last Last Chance, I think, is a novel about tragedy at different levels of scale:

1. Tragedy at the personal level. This driving force of the story is drug addiction. The main character is funny and broken and--most importantly--both trying and not trying to get clean.

2. Tragedy at the family level. This wider focus is about a broken family, with death and drugs and suicide and lost love all winding through the protagonist's journey but also putting her addiction in context so that it's not some isolated event. Plus their family is the media nexus of a national tragedy, which brings us to...

3. Tragedy at the national/global level. The background to everything going on in the novel is the threat of a "super-plague." While reading, I was constantly challenged to connect (thematically) the plague to the drug addiction. (And I'm pretty sure I'm trying to read more into things than I should but that's a sign of a good book!) A. They're both a form of untreatable disease. B. There is an idea that perhaps only recovering addicts are equipped to deal with the breakdown of a post-plague society C. Most importantly I think it's the juxtaposition of the personal and global, and it's about this idea of how we deal with tragedy at different levels.

4. Tragedy at the spiritual/religious. The other major theme or plot point (if you can call it that) is about resurrection, as well as a need for and the failure of belief. This is both tragedy at a grand scale, above the global level, and also at the innermost scale, below even the personal. Resurrection is about trying and trying and never quite getting it right (last last chance) and then failing at even the most basic level of accepting a higher power.

Despite all this tragedy, I found the book very hopeful (sometimes surprisingly so). The characters often talk about how attempting to quit a drug habit in the midst of a super-plague that might kill everyone is both selfish and pointless, but it's also really touching and hopeful... it's admitting that there's still a reason to be better, and that's a belief in something even when spiritual belief isn't available.

Though there was a part of me that wondered about the title, the plague, and the resurrection plot line: what if EVERYONE dies from the super-plague? Does that mean the cycle of resurrection ends? Is that why this is the LAST last chance?

Like Woke Up Lonely, things are not wrapped up neatly for us, and the ending is mostly grief with some tiny rays of hope, though no matter how much we want it to be a happy conclusion it seems pretty bleak. But that's fitting and earned. These are not characters or story lines on a trajectory towards ultimate happiness. The book is about struggling to get by, right up until the end.

[El · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lucy's life is not exactly what she imagined for herself by the time she turned 30. She is a drug-addict working in a chicken plant; her rich mother is a crackhead; her father who previously worked for Centers for Disease Control commit suicide, most likely after the outbreak of the superplague is blamed on him; her 12-year-old half-sister, Hannah, is obsessed with disease; and she has an obsession with her best friend's new husband, Eric, whom Lucy knew and loved first. She is, in other words, a mess.

Her story begins with her best friend's wedding back home. Lucy takes her older co-worker, Stanley, an alcoholic whose past haunts him. Stanley becomes the rock that Lucy needs to make her visit home a success, but often she is too far gone to make good use of him. While trying to win back/get over Eric and make good with her best friend again at the same time as trying to help her mom (and sometimes herself) sober up Lucy also tries to reach out to her jaded little sister who, let's be honest, has seen enough in this household to last her a lifetime. And outside the superplague is gaining momentum.

There are several premises here which seem sort of interesting - superplague, drug addiction and rehab, family dynamics, love and truth - but when thrown together by Fiona Maazel in an often amusing setting belittles the importance of any of it. Maazel's writing style is light and definitely aims to win over the hipster crowd when really her wry comments and phrases are only charming when a couple friends are talking that way. An entire book of it tends to grow old and I personally wound up wanting to smack everyone involved in the story, including the author since the whole thing is her fault anyway. The book could have been about 100+ pages shorter and I would probably have respected it a lot more. As it is, however, it felt too much like Maazel really just wanted to stroke herself on paper.

[Stop]

Read the STOP SMILING interview with Last Last Chance author Fiona Maazel:

FIONA MAAZEL'S GOT THE HUMAN CONDITION -- AND OUR CONDOLENCES

Fiona Maazel, whose first novel, Last Last Chance, was published in March by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, thinks her résumé is a bit boring. She obtained her BA at Williams College and her MFA at Bennington. Interned at The Paris Review in the summer of 1997; served as managing editor, 2003-2005. Received a Lannan Fellowship for Fiction in 2005. Has contributed to such publications/sites as Bomb, Boston Book Review, GQ, n+1, Salon, Tin House and the Village Voice. Lives in Brooklyn, where she plays the guitar “very badly,” makes “stupid” movies, and edits books for “$$$” (money, I presume). Teaches occasionally. Is currently at work on her second novel.

Okay, that does sound boring, the way she tells it. Allow me, then: born in a car crash; mother isn’t sure where the little one has disappeared to until she starts reeling the cord back in; cigars and smiles all around. Learned rebbes declare the circumstances of her arrival a sign of future literary greatness. At age 3, Maazel saves a drunken John Cheever from drowning in his pool after he tries to prove that the central conceit of “The Swimmer,” his 1964 short story, actually does have validity...

Read the interview...

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used the "science-fiction" tag because it seemed appropriate for a novel about the outbreak of a superplague that steadily makes its way across the U.S. towards the protagonist, but Fiona's storytelling most reminds of the not-quite-science-fiction worlds of Ted Mooney novels, or a slightly more accelerated version of the "mainstream" books William Gibson has been doing recently like Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. (The acknowledgments at the back of the book cite Jim Shepard; you might also feel some George Saunders vibe from the story's blend of surreal events and emotional realism.]

And, really, the plague, while it comes to take a central role in the story, is in some ways (along with several other outrageous elements, from Christian fundamentalist summer camps to Asatru revival meetings) an ornament hanging on an intimate family drama of addiction recovery and integrating relationships.

A lot of people will probably find this novel "too weird" for them, but if you're willing to give it a chance, it may just win you over.

[Ray Knickmeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was actually somewhat leery of this book based on the description. It felt as if there would be too much going on for it to ever come together into a meaningful whole. Norse mythology, drug addiction, a super plague, radical fundamentalism and teenage angst. A lot of quirky characters that could easily have over powered each other. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the novel came together somehow managing to balance all these things relatively neatly and presenting a main character that easily could have been irritating in a way that made her flawed, but understandable.[return][return]Perhaps my favorite thing about the novel is the way it presents us with two very modern and very different fears. The very public and very global fear surrounding pandemics and biological warfare and the very private struggle with drug addiction. It may seem like these are two themes that would fall apart when presented together, but the contrasting nature of the two brings about interesting themes and revelations. [return][return]Maazel has a great voice, presenting frightening times with a touch of snarky humor that takes a bit of the edge off without sacrificing the tension. It isn't a novel that I would recommend to everyone, some people will find it hard to like the characters who are across the board, deeply deeply screwed up and by in large tremendously selfish. But, as the story unfolds, the characters grow, and we get a glimpse of how adversity can make better people of just about anyone.[return][return]http://cabal.knickmeyer.net/

[Bud Mallar · Rating 3 out of 5]

well, I'm not sure what to say. Another book where the current novel is getting rave reviews so I went back to the early books by the author.

Perhaps some humor would have helped in this supposedly humorous book, but I didn't get it.

Every character is badly flawed, failing, and doesn't seem to give a shit.

Perhaps, one could argue, that Lucy still believes, and at times you get a sense of hope.

Perhaps better to think about some of the themes raised in the book - drugs, old age, plague and other fun things like reincarnation - and hope there is a future for those damned to the cyclical nature of drug use, and for all of us when madmen use chemical, or in this case, biological, weapons against others.

Perhaps there are answers in the well written book - there is good dialogue, lots of questions asked, a couple of people you begin to care about and root for in the midst of a world I don't think I want to live in, and a story line that holds all together.

There were times I thought of putting it down and moving on to something fun, silly and sexy, but stuck with it and think it was worth the effort.

Maybe I was just lucky in how I was raised and have a different sort of life.

Then again. Lucy, has the same dreams I had

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find myself only writing reviews for books I enjoy, and Last Last Chance is definitely one of those books. There's a lot going on in it: drug abuse, strained family dynamics, cross country travel, rehab, reincarnation, spurned love, and, of course, a flu-like epidemic that threatens to end all human life as we know it. Strange and disparate as all of these elements may be, they come together in the form of a solid story about a young woman who both wants and does not want to get her life and her family back and has found that this is the absolute last moment she has to make a decision. The prose is straightforward enough, as is the storyline, but there are several moments where the author perfectly captures what it feels like to be out of options and yet still unable to make a decision. Last Last Chance is also funny, which is a surprise due to the subject matter, which only makes the personal family relationships and situations all the more real and, ultimately, sad.

[Jennifer Arnold · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was, uh, weird. My judgement on the 'quirky but good' front seems to be way off these days (see Arsonist's Guide). It's the story of Lucy, an addict who's father may or may not have released a superplague from his laboratory, and her family - her wealthy crack-addict mom (hey, she makes her own!), her grandmother, and her 12 year old half-sister (a product of Dad's affair)- as she attempts to get clean, take care of her sister, and deal with the likely spread of the superplague. It had its moments (her description of The Face on the Milk Carton made me laugh out loud), but there was no real payoff in terms of the story or the characters. Oh well.

[juliet/ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like it. The tension of such a dysfunctional family who share drug abuse, escapism, and a super plague threatening to kill all of mankind. Mixed in with everything is wonderful prose and humor. The characters are real and could be any of us. I'm anxious to finish it.
I'm finished and I have to say that I enjoyed the last third of the book much more than the beginning. Maybe because I was able to truly give my attention to it. Even the reincarnation scenes were much more effortless in the last part of the book and the resolution at the end is bittersweet. I cried during the last chapters. I'd re-read it.

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of a hectic tale about a crackhead daughter of a crackhead who lives in NYC...Brooklyn? Although these people are addicts, it is clear that they are not public about their drug use. They enjoy inhabiting a niche of middle class city society complete with brie and crudite parties on occasion. Combines a know-it-all and world weary young woman's introspections and observations of her peers, surroundings, and family, with an ominous allusion to pending plague of illness befalling the nation. Points for originality with the storyline. Lacks the anxiety and angst I associate with most rehab memoirs, replacing it with a dry and unapologetic wry wit.

[Shoshana]

David really enjoyed this, and finished it quickly. I've been "reading" it for two months, got through about 10 chapters, and finally put it back on the shelf. I just couldn't get into it. I hate having to make an "abandoned" category -- what sad images of water-logged, discarded books it conjures! -- but I don't know that I care to return to this one. He can give this one to his sister and I won't mind (unlike the others that have "disappeared" from the shelves). It insists my books retain a read/currently reading/to-read status, thus forever it remains, "read" but in limbo.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been following @picadorUSA on Twitter for awhile now, and this was one of the books they offered free copies of for the 140 character book club. I'm really glad I discovered Maazel's quirky first novel even if it was a rather unconventional way. Last Last Chance is not an easy read but it was a rewarding one. I found the characters to be believable and even a bit likeable despite their many flaws. Maazel has a fantastic imagination and brings a lot of unique elements together into one cohesive story.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could have put this down at any time; still not sure why I kept with it since I knew early on that I was hating it. Hated the characters, hated the writing style, hated the weird reincarnation chapters. I can kinda sorta see how someone could like it; it's not bad per se, it's just not for me. This is also the second book I've read recently where a thirty something woman spends years pining away for an old boyfriend, which is something I just cannot stand. I know I'm unsentimental in this way, but there are billions of people in the world. Find someone else and move on.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typically not my kind of book. Too, Chuck for me. And god, I hate Chuck.

But although the writing was similar, there was something immensely different. I found myself, by the end of the novel, very connected to all of the characters in a very real way. Which is not what you would expect with this almost frenetic prose. "I don't know how I feel about this," ran through my mind the entire way through the book. But by the end I knew there would always be a special place in my heart for Lucy, Stanley, Izzy, Hannah and Agneth.

[Noreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writer is the conductor Lorin Maazel's daughter.

Her quirky sense of humor and feeling for language make this debut novel an interesting and ultimately moving read.

And I love her website. Click on the bio "dot" on it to play the video and you'll see why.

http://www.lastlastchance.com/

[Cathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Randomly picked up this book. Was a little hard to get into, but then ended up keeping me reading 'til the end . She's a good writer, liked the character development. Weird to be reading it - about spread of superplague across US - during the swine flu scare. But it's not really sci-fi and about plague. Hard to classify.

[BAM who is Beth Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

i am giving this book two stars. initially.

i just finished it, and i think i need to digest a bit before i write my review.

i will say, the author does a good job of making weird and rather unlikeable characters sympathetic and funny and worthy of reading about.

i want to revisit this review later.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

The surrealism of this book cannot be overrated! Despite the disturbing subject matter, the apocalyptic events, and the instability of the narrator, the writing draws you into the world that circles the drain in concentric circles of devotion.
I ended up loving every character and wishing for more from this fantastic author!

[Camille · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although this is not my kind of read, I completed it. The story mirrors our current situation with Ebola outbreaks in the US.

A family is accused, tortured and humidified for releasing a deadly virus. The story covers the dysfunction within the family and society and the addiction that ruins and strengthens it.

A good read for this time, otherwise I would pass on it.

[chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. If you can't decide whether to read a zombie novel, chick lit, or rehab memoir; and you want something that combines the worst of all three, written in a whiney OMG vernacular, this book is for you.

[Kaethe]

There was a mention of something plague, but right now we're dealing with an addict and the all important issue of a date for a wedding, which is irking me, and I don't have the patience to work through the idiosyncratic first person narration to get to the plague.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beside the fact that I began reading this book about a super plague right before the swine flu hit, I found the story pretty boring. The book pretty much plodded along. Maybe I just don't "get" being an addict.

[Julia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm almost finished so I will probably finish but I don't really care how it ends.

ETA: Nope, I couldn't do it. Ugh.

The chapters from different perspectives are schlocky and sloppy. There's too much going on. The main love story can go nowhere. Yuck.

[Britt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those novels that needs to simmer. Ripen. Percolate. Okay..I think you get the point. At first I felt annoyed and contemplated stopping reading. I persevered and ended up truly enjoying it.