The Dead and the Gone

The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Available in the Swift Current Library: Yes
General Topics: Natural disasters, enviromental, human relationships, survial, family (for more mature youth)
Rating out of 5: 4.5 out of 5

Summary: 17 year old Alex has life set out for him. He has a college picked out, he is on of the top of his class grade list, he has a job and all he wants is to be elected class president of his senior year. But on his way home from work he notices things are just not right. People are sobbing, praying and running on the streets. When he looks up, he sees that the moon is a lot bigger then usual. It is out of orbit. This affects evrything, from volcanoes to tides to amount of sunlight needed to grow food. When subways flood, stores close and his parents don't come home, will Alex be able to keep his two younger sisters alive and at what cost?

Good Points: -Thought-provoking
- Interesting characters
-Realistic view on humans and our society

Bad Points: -Not a very good stand alone book.
- Hard to get into due to the third person perspective

Overall review: This was an excellent book once I got into it. The book starts with a major event (the astroid) and does a hundred or so page decresendo. Although those pages were a struggle, they were important to the book and fundimental to the rest of the story. After I toughed that out, it instantly got better. I read without wanting to put it down.
This book would likely not work as a stand-alone. In order to fully understand the major event of the moon, it would be a good idea to read LIFE AS WE KNEW IT by the same author. That book is the first, so to say, of the series. LIFE AS WE KNEW IT was a first person journal perspective of a small town girl, where as THE DEAD AND THE GONE is a third person perspective of a boy in New York city. The only real simularity they have is the major event, the moon leaving orbit, which is better explained in LIFE AS WE KNEW IT.
The view on human society was well shown and it proved our desperation as a society to survive and how quickly a happy neighborhood can turn into a 'dog-eat-dog'/survival of the fittest jungle. When people are faced with tough times, we do weird things as this story portrays.
If you want a happy ending, then this is not your book. This is a major event, one that can not be solved in a matter of weeks, months or years. But it does provide a glimmer of hope for you to hang on to.

If you liked this book, also try: Life as we Knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Visit the author's website at: http://susanbethpfeffer.blogspot.com/