4.5 stars

I feel like the way I'd consistently heard this book described is a complete injustice to the story it actually tells. Is it about a traveling group of actors in a post-apocalyptic world? A little bit.

It's also so much more. I feel like it was good and bad that I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. One the one hand, my expectations were low and completely blown out of the water. On the other, it took me so long to read this because, although I had read wonderful things, there was nothing about it that really gripped me. I was wrong, and I loved it, and it's strange enough that it won't be for everyone, but I loved it.

What we have here is a series of interconnected stories that go back and forth across time. Yes, in the present times, the world is being rebuilt after a huge portion of the population was wiped out by a flu. In the past, we read about the lives of people on the verge of experiencing the almost-end-of-the-world. Everything seems to revolve around one character in particular, but also around the ideas of art, humanity, and resilience. This is all about shared experiences, whether that's a play or a pandemic or a new way of living or a shared acquaintance. It's layered and thoughtful and I loved what it had to say about all of these things.

Mandel's style is absolutely disarming. It's difficult to pinpoint what she does exactly because she does it so carefully and gracefully, you can't even see the seams. It doesn't feel "fancy," but I was stunned all the same by the way she connected everything, took her time, and created these terrible and wonderful characters, each of them representative of how terrible and wonderful it is that humans survive and survive and survive.

I've seen a lot of love for this book, but I've occasionally come across a less than admiring review and I also understand that. This book is really strange. It connects things like a play many years ago and a graphic novel series left undone and a cult. I think that's part of the charm but anyone that won't be able to get past the surrealness, that can't be led away to connect all the dots, will have a hard time with this read.

My one annoyance was a specific character that becomes a more prominent antagonist later in the book. I thought he was a bit of a weird addition in a book that excels at these grounded characters in strange situations. He felt cartoonish and I ended up not enjoying his sections of the story as much.

Otherwise, one of the most surprising, lovely things I read in 2015.