The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 15 May 2001
by Jonathan Lerner
Taking a cue from the 1949 novel Earth Abides, Jonathan Lerner pens a book which follows the lives of a small group of people on the gulf coast of Florida after a monumental environmental catastrophe has destroyed civilization as we know it. Here, Julian, Jaydie, Miss Audrey and little Sylvia live together in a house overlooking the small town of Cape Harrier. Every one of them has been shaped by death and desertion. It is a couple years since the final disaster, and these folks are surviving. The book opens as a fire sweeps through the forest across the bay, and with the fears that there will be no more wood to gather. Living has become this basic, but as the book progresses, and their pasts lurk about the edges, or appear out of the devastation, Jaydie and Julian must face the possibility that their tiny community has a future. Given that so much death has formed their characters, it is a curious aspect of this little book that all of the death occurs off stage. It is as if the author was somehow avoiding its severity. Yet, in the lives of the survivors, they must work together and even find desperate solace and comfort in each other's arms. Death may be off-stage, but sex is certainly on stage. Lerner seems to be assembling a tale of mixed relationships and the comfort we seek from each other. There is a sad edge to this, of course, in the shadow of the end of the world. Most of the characters are well drawn and distinct. Julian, especially, is a good narrator, given to fascination and denial, strengths and weaknesses. Their knowledge of the End is strangely absent, but the reader's mind may reel at the imagined possibilities. Still, there is a natural conviction in the novel. It is desperate, gentle and violently immediate all at once.