Total Oblivion, More or Less

by Anya Johanna DeNiro

“I remember the first time I began to understand that things might not be the same again.” What’s a girl to do when her world is invaded by warriors from the ancient world? That’s the problem faced by sixteen-year-old Macy, who sees her quiet, normal life in suburban Minnesota turned upside down when things that should never be possible begin to transform the landscape all around her. The cable stops working, the phone lines die–and then the horsemen come to town. It’s not the same America that she last went to sleep in.Ticketed to a refugee camp by the marauding Scythian armies, Macy and her family come to believe that heading down the Mississippi by boat is their one escape from the encroaching madness. But as they make their way downriver, Macy’s world just keeps getting stranger, and the wooden submarines, wasp-borne plagues, and talking dogs are the least of her For in this upside-down world, old identities warp and family bonds are sorely tested.Acclaimed writer Alan DeNiro has fashioned a completely original, utterly beguiling melding of the surreal and the everyday.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Dystopia

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Craig Leimkuehler]

This is a remarkable book. Remarkable by the fact that it was published at all. The basic premise of the book is about 16 year old Macy and her family's struggles in some sort of weird end-of-the-world future that defies discription or any sense of logic. Sadly Mr. Deniro takes a promising idea and kills it ike a bug under foot. I was hoping for something more along the lines of Terry Brooks "Running with the Demon".

I think it would much more interesting/entertaining to learn what methods did Alan Deniro employ to get this book published. Did he have compromising pictures of the editor? Was there ever an editor? Do we blame the university of Virginia for giving him a MFA in poetry writing? Did he threaten bodily harm to the publisher? Has he ever read a novel, thus explaining why he had so much trouble writing one. Is this the fault of the Tea Party Express or do we blame at the feet of President Obama? So many questions, so few answers.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

DeNiro's first novel (following a well-received string of short stories) presents a transformed near-future America: the nation is beset by anachronistic invaders, ravaged by a mysterious plague, and technology stops working. DeNiro pulls off the neat trick of making his surreal world feel internally consistent, largely because it's grounded by the narrative voice of Macy, a young woman who finds herself on a river journey through this newly even stranger country. The matter-of-factness of her voice addresses the credibility gap, but it's not without music:

I looked at Iowa. Moss-covered, windowless pickup trucks were marooned on the highway running alongside the river. A skinned, headless deer hung from a tree in a flooded backyard, next to a swing set. A trio of hide tents were set up on the flat roof of a strip mall's bait shop. A small, skinny dog, smothered in mud, foraged along the banks.

and

. . .then there'd be that laugh of my mother's, clear and clumsy, like a woman tripping over a bell that someone left on a cathedral floor by accident,

Total Oblivion, More or Less is divided into two major sections, and while I liked the book as a whole, I loved the first, and thought it was more successful than the second. The first half is (more or less, mostly) picaresque. Its catalog of strangeness and episodic encounters wraps up just as it's beginning to feel a touch repetitive. Huck Finn's shadow is so long it's virtually impossible for a satiric book with a river boat not to call Twain to mind at least a bit; DeNiro's ordinary folk confronted with the extraordinary also reminded me of George Saunders, and a smidge (despite a world or stylistic and thematic differences) of Rachel Pollack's Unquenchable Fire.

In the second half, Macy and her family become increasingly embroiled in emerging political conflicts, and one of the characters is gradually revealed to be a sort of archetype. The novel also begins to suggest disappointingly straightforward metaphorical interpretations for the plague and the invaders. There are elements that evoke -- deliberately, I'm inclined to think -- Swift, Kafka, and Mervyn Peake; I thought at least one of these bordered on the gimmicky.

I also suspect it was a difficult book to decide how to end. DeNiro opts for small "r" naturalistic resolution over big "R" epic fantasy-style resolution -- the right choice, but since DeNiro still has a lot of balls in play when the curtain comes down, it feels a bit abrupt. Overall, though, it's a strong debut and certainly leaves me eager for more from DeNiro.

[Krysten · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got far enough in this book that if I'd read for another 20-30 minutes, I could have finished. At the last moment, though, I decided I really didn't care.

This book was surreal, which I don't have a problem with. My problem was that everything was impossible to contextualize. Nothing was explained, it was just, bam, here's this new reality. I was hoping for an apocalypse and I got what essentially seemed like a different dimension or something. Geography was different and dogs were talking and ugh. The book read like a gross fever dream and the narrator was stupid. DeNiro doesn't know how to write a stupid teenage narrator, though, because he kept having her use ridiculous terms that I'd never read in another book, let alone one narrated by a teenager. She would never have used such words.

And this was all after the first part of the book, whose CONSTANT references to St. Paul landmarks did not ring true with me at all.

Sorry dude, this book just doesn't have anything going for it.

[Daniel Withrow · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book and Devil's Alphabet back to back, and the latter drove the former's faults into stark relief. Both books deal with a cataclysm that upends civilization in some way. Where the characters in Devil's Alphabet handle the cataclysm with plausible, complex, and imminently readable reactions, the characters in Total Oblivion respond cartoonishly, annoyingly, boringly. It's as if the author has never met a human being before and doesn't have any idea what they're like.

At the same time, it comes across insufferably smug: the author is very proud of the book's conceit.

Some books I'm nonplussed by when I finish them, but they grow on me. Some books I enjoy when I finish them, but they pale the more I think about this one. I disliked this book when I finished it, and the more I think about it, the more I dislike it.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I appreciate the absurdity of DeNiro's imagined post-apocalyptic United States, and he takes a big risk by refusing to explain any of it. That makes sense as the characters in the novel would have no opportunity to even begin to understand what was happening to their world beyond the visible results.

This is ultimately a story of a family that is being torn apart, and of a teenage girl's attempt to save her brother, despite how he has slighted her. The relationships within the family are well written, and you feel for the protagonist and her family. However, the rest of the characters seem to suffer as a result. I can't put my finger on why, since their motivations are clearly outlined in the text, some of the other characters struck me as plot puppets as opposed to having their own motivations, especially as they begin to align with Macy. This may have less to do with the characters than it does with my own irritation at the ending, which was far too pat given the circumstances.

One other note, there is plenty of dialogue in this novel, but absolutely none of it is enclosed in quotation marks. This was clearly a stylistic choice, and it is extremely distracting, especially as you will often be halfway through a sentence before you realize it is dialogue and then you have to go back and start reading it again. It was irritating in the extreme, and even my fiancé (who was peeking at it over my shoulder) remarked on how confusing that was.

Normally, I would give a book of this quality about three stars, but the quotation mark issue described above made it so frustrating an experience to read that I have to knock it down to two. If you don't think that issue would bother you, then you have a quick three-star read (enjoyable, but not amazing) ahead of you.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 2 out of 5]

So suppose something big happens and The World As We Know It has to change, Fine. Lots of authors have done that well. Obviously our heroes are going to have to go on A Quest. And they do.

But suppose we lay out the following as part of the deal: (1) the stars aren't where they should be (2) there are some clumps of Scythian warriors, and no one seems to think there's anything odd about it. (3) there's a talking dog (4) in the midst of this, a woman who might have been a bartender in a previous life has a rather large submarine in the Missisippi (5) people stung by wasps turn into paper ...... there's more, but I'll skip it ... AND THE AUTHOR MAKES NO ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN ANY OF IT.

Obvious decision, really, because he would not be ABLE to explain it, because it's all absurdist. OK, set aside my expectation of an SF/F book and let's say it's an absurdist semi-mainstream social commentary. Does it have a few social-commentary ideas? Sure. Are they engaging, new or interesting? Not really.

In the end, it felt as if DeNiro decided to do a novel, laid out a situation and a couple of characters, and maybe an ending, then just started writing without further planning. We go round a bend in the river, the author invents a new absurdism, everyone reacts, repeat as required.

It all wraps up far too neatly, with several cases of characters pelting around a corner and hey, whaddya know, here's so-and-so from 200 pages ago! Just the person I need right now!

I won't read more from this author. Well, OK, maybe short stories, where this inventiveness might work better.

[TheSaint · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. But as it turns out, DeNiro's post-apocolyptic vision and mine just don't jibe.
I could have used a hair more exposition, so I could kind of tell where the characters had been and how they might navigate their futures. But what I got was a feeling that I was along for their ride. They had no idea what had happened to the world and neither did I. So I guess that was a good literary exercise, even though it made me uncomfortable.
Still, I could have appreciated that exercise more, if I'd been able to identify with the characters. Frankly, there was nothing about them that interested me, or made me sympathize with them.
And for me: no character, no caring.

[May · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know how it's possible. But this was both very interesting and kinda boring to read. Things got so nonsensical that I kind of stopped caring, but I also wanted to know what happened. Of course, in the end, it turns out I didn't care too much. If you're into strangeness for strangeness' sake, then you'll like this book. Otherwise, it might interest you in some parts and bore you in others. I couldn't tell what the author was going for, except maybe to make a more cracked-out coming of age story than Alice In Wonderland.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan DeNiro never writes the expected, so don't expect your ordinary apocalypse when you open this seriously funny-sad apocalyptic novel. There are lots of bangs in here, and lots of whimpers, and lots and lots of hope for something better, which most end-of-the-world tales forget to tell about. Highly recommended.

[Kate Maddalena · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an YA lit post-apocalyptic fantasy. World of Warcraft takes over St. Paul, Minnesota.

If you have a 15-year-old, he or she should read it.

My ultimate impression, though, is that there were too many ideas to fit in one book. I'd like to know all of the stories, slowly, and instead we sort of dip in to 16 or so, and the whole thing turns out half-baked.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally biased here as the author is my husband. But, this really was a great book full of all the Alan DeNiro craziness, genius and heart you could want. Coming out November 24th!

[Ⓛeah ✿εїз✾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 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[Patrick W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally posed on my review blog, Stomping on Yeti at http://yetistomper.blogspot.com/2010/... Words or Less: Depicting the ancient past�s invasion of the American present, DeNiro�s debut novel echoes the feeling of his surreal shorter fiction: imaginative and unpredictable but at times uneven.[return][return]Rating: 3/5 stars[return][return]The Good: When it works, the base concept is interesting, thought-provoking, and even hilarious at times; The somewhat chaotic plot comes back together in unexpected ways toward the end of the novel; [return][return]The Bad: Lack of internal world logic may bug the rationale types; Had trouble attaching myself to the protagonist; Somewhat random asides disrupt the main plot[return][return]When I did some research for my interview with Alan DeNiro last year, I read his short fiction collection Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. Each story evoked a different emotion from me. Some stories I loved, others fell completely flat. The strangest part was that it wasn�t a gradual progression. I would be amazed by the sixth story, struggle to finish the seventh, and then devour the eighth. There was no denying that all of it was imaginative and all of it felt like it was really trying to say something worth saying. The simple truth was that for me, some of it worked and some of it didn�t. As I turned the pages of Total Oblivion, More or Less, I realized that it was happening again.[return][return]The main thread of the book concerns Macy Palmer, Minnesotan and her mildly dysfunctional family. They aren�t extremely dysfunctional just the average American blend of middle-child syndrome, oversheltered youths, and other mild maladies. The Palmers travel down the Mississippi seeking safer shores after an unexpected invasion. Not an invasion of Canadians or Russians, mind you, an invasion from the past. Things begin to happen without reason. Barbarians begin to invade and pillage. Ancient imperial armies appear to combat the barbarians but claim the land as their own. Diseases with symbolic symptoms spread and kill and spread some more. Technology stops working. The world rapidly becomes a weird, weird place. Naturally, Macy�s dad decide Minnesota isn�t safe and decides to move his wife, two daughters, and Napoleonic son to St. Louis to take a teaching job and escape the rapidly deteriorating conditions. And that�s just the setup. There are wooden submarines, talking dogs, stone skyscrapers, and even a giraffe or two. [return][return]To be fair, this wasn�t the best book for me. I think very rationally and I get easily hung up on inconsistencies. When the world stops obeying the laws of time, physics, and internal logic, it�s only a matter of time before I have a hard time accepting things. But to DeNiro�s credit, he can write some extremely imaginative sequences and make them work. Despite my natural inclinations, when the book was good it was great. By pushing this typical American family through a series of obstacles so strange it would make Double Dare do a double take, DeNiro seems to be making some statements about the state of American family and culture. Ranging from subtle irony to outright satire (as an example, the barbarians keep McDonald�s open for the fast food), there are a number of layers to this work and I have no doubt that you could delve deeper and pull out connections that you missed on your first read through. [return][return]But for every segment that really hooked me early on, there seemed to be another that just didn�t fit. At times, the plot seemed to stagnate as DeNiro focused on developing the principal characters in his story. Unfortunately, none of these characters are especially sympathetic or interesting until late in the novel. They aren�t shallow; they just don�t feel worth reading about. It was simply too easy to set the book down and walk away. [return][return]Not helping was the structure of the story itself. In between each of the chapters, DeNiro places an aside that exposes a little piece of his larger, illogical world. Each aside was different in content and tone, ranging from health advice from imperial doctors and urban legends to random correspondence and Palmer family backstory. Some were certainly interesting but others fell short of that mark and in a book that was so chaotic already, they just provided further distraction. [return][return]Ultimately, the narrative becomes more focused on Macy herself. When this happens she stops serving as a lens through which her family is overanalyzed and instead takes on a more active role in the book. This marks a turning point in the novel at which a plot begins to emerge out of the absurdity and the wildly inconsistent scenes trend toward a satisfying conclusion. Even some (but not all) of the offputting asides were brought into cohesion with the larger story. I still don�t think they benefited the novel but DeNiro at least managed to redeem their prior inclusion.[return][return]In the end, despite my distaste for portions of the book, I felt like its strengths outweighed its flaws. Even the parts that I didn�t enjoy seemed overly ambitious rather than intrinsically flawed. I understood what he was trying to do and while it didn�t work for me, I could respect it from a more literary perspective. There is no denying that DeNiro has one of the most imaginative and unique voices in the genre today. If he can learn to pair his unpredictable creativity with a tighter story, the resulting book should be something special. Total Oblivion, More or Less is less than a total success but there is clearly enough potential to expect big things from DeNiro�s future efforts.

[Anna Engel · Rating 2 out of 5]

+1 star for creative absurdity
+1 star for being a quick read
-1 star for failing to write like a 16-year-old girl
-1 star for borrowing from The Stand

The level of absurdity got too high and the plot was no longer believable. I was willing to go along with the ancient-warriors-returned theme, the float down the river, the rapid adaption to a strange new world, and plague. Overall, though, the sum of its parts added up to purple monkey dishwasher.

[Lena Frey · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a mess. I cannot pay attention to it. The grammar is off, the storytelling makes no sense. Too many filler paragraphs and sentences. Hoo boy. If you are going to write as a teenager, then do so.... Don't be afraid to not use big words that most teenagers would never use.

I commend anyone able to publish a book but in the words of my 16 year old niece, big oof.

[Cristi McGill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boy, where to begin? This is easily the WEIRDEST book I have ever read in my entire life and I have read a LOT of books. Having said that, I couldn't not finish it. I wanted to give up on it, believe me. I can't think of what to compare it to, I can't think of who I would ever recommend it to. Would I ever read it again? Lord, no. It's strange as heck but oddly compelling.

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A postmodern narrativeset in a post-apocalyptic North America , akin to The Shark Diaries, but less enthralling. Perhaps because there is no Ian. Colin the dog/brother has a bigger part to play in the action though. I stopped reading this twice but was drawn back to finish. Glad I did.

[Irina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!

[Paul Cowling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a fun book, but certainly geared towards a teen audience.

[Chris Devine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the weirdest books I've read, and it's awesome. The end.

[Eddie :) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t often say that books are terrible, but this one was. This would’ve thrived as a shitty 2011 series on HBO or Pluto. Also wdym the talking dog has the soul of her baby brother??

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

An altogether interesting read. I'm having a hard time pinning down my feelings about it as a whole, though. I read the book with the assumption that absurdism played a pretty big part in this post-apocalyptic United States, and I think it greatly helped. I mean, so much of it is absurdist, but not all in a bad way. Sometimes it seemed like the tossing-in of wacky stuff might have taken away from the experience of the book as a cohesive story, but other times, it seemed to fit, like seeing giraffes wandering about with empty saddles after a battle won by the Empire was just how it had to be. I think the cover of this edition fits the book perfectly, in the whole mashing together of all kinds of crazy, and perhaps it was all a dog's dream.

I experienced this book as a Thomas Pynchon work (I've only read "Crying of Lot 49," so, accessible, but batshit crazy) mixed with a really warped kind of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain tossed in. The story centers around the Midwest and traveling up and down the Mississippi River on small river boats, trying to avoid capture by Scythians or Empire soldiers, etc. Both of these aspects felt like good things, I might add. I'm aware that one can read into that as being a criticism, but it felt alright.

Another interesting aspect of the story was the complete lack of explanation for ANYTHING that was happening -- who are the Scythians? Where did they come from? Who is the Empire? What's the deal with this wasp plague? Why does everyone just go with this massive change as if nothing was happening? How does a city become built with 60-story skyscrapers from castle-stone with a system of draw-bridges linking buildings, in less than 6 months? What?!? I actually kind of liked this lack of explanation -- the author obviously had some guts to go at this in this way.

My one complaint ... St. Louis, Missouri should just never be referred to as "Lou". Uggh. I cringed every time I read this as a reference to St. Louis. It seriously felt like an uncool parent trying to use the kids' slang, but totally screwing it up because "Lou" isn't something anyone from St. Louis would say. Just had to say it, being from St. Louis, it's not "Lou", "The Lou", "Louie", "St. Louie" (like in the movie, NO). Thatisall.

Thanks, Mr. DeNiro, for coming into Left Bank Books and giving me a copy to read ... a St. Louis post-apocalyptic book, who'd have thought?!

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

This debut novel took me months to finish, I kept picking it up reading ten pages, putting it down, and came close to giving up on it multiple times. By the end, I kind of wish I had, because it never really comes together in any meaningful way. The story has all kinds of imaginative elements, but they're jumbled together so incoherently that they lose all meaning.

At its heart, it's kind of a post-apocalyptic river journey (hard not to think of Twain here), as some kind of space-time rift has occurred and the United States has ceased to exist. Instead there seems to be some kind of empire, and there are Goths and Scythians roaming around, concentration camps, slavery, and a mutant plague, and all technology fails to work. The heroine here is Macy, a regular 16-year-old girl from St. Paul, who is heading downriver with her family (college professor father, sick and pregnant mother, older sister, younger brother). Various calamities befall them, they meet strange people, some of whom are helpful, some not. There are family issues. There's a talking dog.

For me, the whole thing was just kind of a mess. Because I couldn't work out the timeline of what had happened (at some points it sounded like society crumbled a few months ago, but in other parts, it had to a have been at least 5-10 years), nor the geography, nor the players involved. And without that grounding, the mission that Macy eventually undertakes has very little meaning. It's hard to tell if the author just had it all clear in his head and couldn't get it on the page, or if it's deliberately confusing. Either way, I never found a way into caring about Macy or any other characters, and so the book didn't work for me.

[Debbie is on Storygraph · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would have just been a two-star book but the last half of the book really took off running. It is a post-apocalyptic world where modern electrical devices stop working, invaders on horseback wielding swords and axes are invading South, the Empire is fighting North, and large corporations have embraced the new world order by selling their workforce as slave labor. Macy and her family find themselves in the middle of this, and end up traveling south on the Mississippi to try and find a new life.

This world was pretty fascinating, but there was a distinct lack of real plot during the first half of the book when the Palmers were traveling on the river. It was interesting but was little more than a montage of all the weird shit that exists in the world now. In Part II, however, I really got sucked into the story and practically read the second half of the book straight through.

Because the story is told from the POV of an ordinary girl, you never really know WHY things are happening, which was mildly frustrating but realistic. DeNiro interjects a short excerpt from a document between each chapter to give more background to the story, which I thought was nicely done (even if the formatting and my Sony Reader did not get along).

I didn't like Macy, the POV character, at the beginning. She felt too passive -- which was symbolized by the river she was traveling on, carrying her wherever. But in Part II, she starts taking actions on her own and having to think for herself and I found myself liking her more.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating of this book goes from 2 stars to 4, in a linear fashion, from beginning to end.

I guess I thought it would be funnier. I mean, it's the apocalypse! I do like the setting: electrical-based things don't work anymore, guns misfire, giraffes start to appear. A tribe of horsemen come from the North and an "Empire" fights them from the South. If people get stung by wasps they turn into paper. The tone of the book is creepy, not funny. I'd like it the other way, I guess.

Our protagonist's dad is an astronomy professor. Here is something I can relate to. He converts his career to astrology when he realizes that his former profession is no longer relevant. I mean, the stars are all in different places! If I saw that happen, I'd give up on everything I ever knew and tell fortunes too.

But in the end of the book there is a quest and some characters actually develop and there is reason behind the actions of our protagonist, instead of her just watching everything happen and feeling weird about it. The end is good.

[Ryan Kennedy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was awful. I mean really awful. I don't often actually write reviews but felt compelled to say a little something about this one. In my adult life I have never read a book that was this difficult to finish. I should have put this one down.

First, the author doesn't use quotation marks to show that someone is speaking. It is really aggravating to get half way though a sentence to realize someone was speaking. Then you have to go back to the beginning of the sentence and start over. yuck.

Second, I'm a big fan of fantasy books but the story has to be plausible and make some sort of sense. I really liked urban fantasy because of the modern and real life twist. The idea of this book is its only redeeming quality. The execution is extremely poor. People sat by and watched invasion and apocalypse happen. They did nothing to prevent it. Nothing when the electricity went out. Nothing when a kid comes to the door and tells them to evacuated to a refugee camp. Nobody fought until they were halfway through the book.

I'm really disappointed.

[Julie Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very strange book but I mean that it the best way possible. I was in awe at the author's creative power. So much of what happens in this post-apocalyptic world is bizarre, and yet the author manages to keep it grounded in reality, so that you actually believe these surreal events could actually take place.


In the midst of all this strangeness, a family tries to survive. The different characters--and their dynamics--are very well realized. The 16 year old protagonist--and main narrator--is by far the most intriguing. Amidst all this confusion and chaos, she goes through a coming-of-age process, so not only is she having to come to terms with a strange new reality, she is also going through the difficult process of growing into herself. Her journey is a pleasure to witness. She has a wicked sense of humor.

It's a credit to the author that the novel is at turns funny, sad, and horrific. It resolves itself perfectly, leaving the reader very satisfied.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This post apocalyptic coming of age story should have been right up my alley, but the surreal landscape and lack of ANY coherent explanation of the geopolitical setting left me cold and annoyed. There's everything from submarines that shoot ceramic jars and plague wasps to slave drivers and dogs that absorb human fetuses and as a result learn to talk. AND NONE OF IT IS EXPLAINED. Maybe it was the author's intention to keep readers as off-kilter and uncomfortable as Macy, the 16-year-old narrator, but the weird and nonsensical details of this ever-shifting world were just distracting and irritating to me. It began to feel like an inside joke that only the author understood, or the interminable description of someone's convoluted dream that makes sense to no one but them. Unless you love surrealistic literature, take a pass on this one.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Macy and her family are forced to flee their comfortable lives in St. Paul when warring bands of horsemen sweep through a society that is hardly recognizable as their own as technology fails and life as they know it evaporates. Heading down the Mississippi River is nothing like Huck Finn's experience and danger is everywhere. This chaotic, adventurous tale is narrated by sixteen year old Macy who states from the outset: "I keep forgetting how little I knew in the beginning. How little everyone knew." DeNiro has created a tale full of treachery and shifting alliances both within Macy's family and the society in general. The reader is as bewildered by this changing geophysical and political landscape as Macy is as both reader and narrator learn to navigate this mutating society.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I also just finished Total Oblivion, More or Less, and it read like a Huckleberry Finn as narrated by Alice Liddel. The story is descent into a strange post-apocalyptic world where much civilization has broken down and science no longer works (imagine if Lamplighter's Aerie Ones got freed from their geis to behave in a predictable manner...), and it mostly works. One element of Deniro's prose style is his lack of direct quotations from characters even in sections of dialogue - this was pretty jarring at first, but I eventually got used to it even if I didn't quite warm all the way to it. I got hooked enough that I had to finish the book, but it didn't make me want to hunt down his short story collection.