Earth Abides
by George R. Stewart
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Book Reviews of Earth Abides
Book Review: Simply Great
Summary: 5 Stars
This great book addresses one of the age-old curiousities so many of us have: What would I do if one day suddenly I was all alone in a world wiped clean of almost every other person?
Ish, the main character, is a non-descript every-day Joe who finds himself in just this scenario. There are a few other survivors along the way, eventually forming a "tribe." They all have their flaws and eccentricities which makes the story all the more believable. If you plucked a random selection of humanity and put them on a desert island they wouldn't all be super heroes! They would bumble along and learn how to survive as best they could within their limited capabilities.
It was the way in which the author wrote the book that made it so great for me. The little interjections within chapters describing the changes in the Earth away from the human plot were great, and they provided context and realism to the human story. The progression through the 60 some-odd years was expertly crafted by singling out the years with momentous turning points for more detail, and speeding through the fascinating "quick years" in between. The descent back to a stone-age type existance twists the emotions. Sad for one who is familiar with the conveniences and comforts of modernity, but understandably necessary for the new human condition.
A great novel that is considered a classic of post AP for very good reason.
Book Review: Now I know why Octavia Butler praised this book
Summary: 4 Stars
A virus wipes out most of humanity within a couple of days. I've read many scifi novels that begin this way, and most of them spend the majority of the subsequent pages describing the ensuing social chaos in dystopian detail. Earth Abides takes a completely different tack. There is no swaggering little Napoleon lording it over a tiny flock of survivors--there are simply too few people left. There is very little deprivation--people can comfortably survive for years on the leftover canned goods in every corner store. Indeed, there is very little drama of any kind.
This is more of a character study of two entities. One is the protagonist, Ish, an anthropologist by training who sees his role primarily as that of an observer of the slow, inevitable decay of civilization. He makes half-hearted attempts to save vestiges of knowledge but is mostly content to watch what happens to the environment around him. The question of what would happen to the planet itself--along with all the plants and animals--without its human caretakers, is the true core of this novel. I heard Octavia Butler recommend this book as one that inspired her, and now that I have read it, I can see why. Thoughtful and surprisingly gentle, it highlights the gifts possessed even by apparently unremarkable people to make a life out of what they are given, supported always by the ultimate Mother: Earth.
Book Review: Bland and Irritating
Summary: 2 Stars
First, as a story, the character development is poor and any drama is virtually non-existent. There are a few opportunities for drama, but in each case, the author fails to draw in the reader and make them care. Similarly, there's little to cause the reader to become invested in the characters. You could read abstracts on the characters and get as much out of them as reading the novel.
Secondly, the "hero" is annoying and a bit contemptible, but perhaps this is the author's goal. Regardless, it made me like the story even less. In short, the hero prefers to sit around and do nothing while he complains inwardly about the dullness and laziness of his "tribe". This goes on, and on, and on... In short, I eventually got tired of the hero's endless elitism and hypocrisy.
Perhaps the author's message is that the hero didn't understand while the simpletons did. Perhaps his message was that civilization is overrated compared to a simple and primitive life, we should stop worrying, live in the now, leave the rat race, etc, etc. If so, his delivery of that message is painfully boring and repetitive for the reader. At the end of the book, I really didn't care if there was a message or what it was.
On a positive note, the prose used to break up chapters was often well-written. It just wasn't enough to make up for the bad execution on the actual story.
Book Review: For some reason, Disappointed
Summary: 3 Stars
This review is a spoiler! Don't read on if you are intending to read it for the first time!
I had heard many times that this was a classic that would haunt me for life. But I was not impressed, partially because there were things that were left unanswered. I may have missed something - what was the significance of the car on the bridge at the end? Modern man's constructions were all around him...the Golden Gate Bridge, for example. Why the car? Why did they want him to die there, instead of with their tribe? I thought it weird, too, and unlikely, that he saw so few bodies in the aftermath. I liked the hammer symbol a lot - and the fact that he passed it on to the young man he'd chosen - and why. I liked that his gift of leadership helped humanity live on. I also liked the way that he changed his desperate struggle from lecturing - to action...his building of the simple bow and arrows. I loved that he continued to describe the inevitable and looming corrosion of the modern world. That did make him the last American - his final months spent with his oldest friend. Those things saddened me a great deal.
I have read another holocaust book that WILL haunt me for life...perhaps because it was on such a massive scale, and yet confined to only one remaining group of characters. The book is The Last Ship, by William Brinkley. I've read it 3 times, as has my oldest son.
Book Review: An unforgettable book
Summary: 4 Stars
With nearly 300 reviews of this book at Amazon, I hardly have to give a summation of the story. I was swept along by the narrative, and I identified greatly with Ish, the protagonist of this post-collapse novel, perhaps because of affinity with his personality. However, I do not give it 5 stars because I happen to differ with the kind of fall-back-into-pre-literate-history climax. Ish should have done a lot more than he did to preserve literacy and a connection with tradition. True, the memory of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the real horrors of the Holocaust is not something we could describe as essential for the survival of mankind, but I could not blithely accept the disappearance of the history and the literature of our human species. There is much that is terrible in our history, but much also that is heroic and even sublime.
However, I must say this book is one that will stick in my mind for a long time, and it is rare today to find a book that will have that effect. Most of the books today that are lauded as "good reads" are just entertainment for a few hours but are quickly forgotten. Not so with "Earth Abides." You may argue with certain aspects of the novel, and/or certain philosophical conclusions of its author, but once you've read it, I doubt that you will be able to dismiss it or pretend you didn't spend a few hours with the survivors of "the plague."