California by Edan Lepucki

California

by Edan Lepucki

The highly acclaimed, instant New York Times bestseller that '[gives] expression to a generational anxiety about the near future, one rooted in the threat of environmental crisis...The experience of reading California brings validation to anyone who sits upright in the middle of the night struck with the instability of the human project on this planet: others are awake, too' Guardian

The sunshine state lies in darkness.

Los Angeles is in ruins, left to the angels now.

And the world Cal and Frida have always known is gone.

Cal and Frida have left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realise this community poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.

A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent,California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

Reviewed by jamiereadthis on

2 of 5 stars

Share
Interesting premise; less-than-interesting execution. Felt like it was a rock skipping the surface and not a boulder plunging underneath. It was very California— I feel in the south, the midwest, the Rust Belt, anything, you’d get so much more out of the politics of a cult in the wake of an apocalypse. At least more interesting surprises.

First half, I enjoyed the day-to-day survival of two people not necessarily primed for survival, in a much more settled setting than The Road. It really would be about carving out a home, getting food planted in the ground, and Lepucki makes it interesting. It’s not watching paint dry.

I also enjoyed the slow burn of the “apocalypse.” It’s not a bang or a whimper. It’s a recognizable world that takes years to go dark, passing many of the same signposts we’re passing today.

The last half goes too M. Night Shyamalan for me with the Spikes and the Pirates and the Vote and the Land. Not even twists are surprising if the people aren’t. Give me one surprising person over ten surprising plots, please.

Obviously I don’t know Lepucki, so this may be unfounded, but I feel like if you got out of LA or NYC you’d write a different story. It thinks it’s going wild when it’s really playing safe, and that’s a big dealbreaker for me.

In sum: good enough, but not better than good. Three stars for the first half, one for the latter, and four for the book jacket, which is beautiful.

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 2 December, 2014: Finished reading
  • 2 December, 2014: Reviewed