Lost Everything
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the critically acclaimed literary SF novels Spaceman Blues and Liberation comes an incandescent and thrilling post-apocalyptic tale in the vein of 1984 or The Road.
In the not-distant-enough future, a man takes a boat trip up the Susquehanna River with his most trusted friend, intent on reuniting with his son. But the man is pursued by an army, and his own harrowing past; and the familiar American landscape has been savaged by war and climate change until it is nearly unrecognizable.
Lost Everything is a stunning novel about family and faith, what we are afraid may come to be, and how to wring hope from hopelessness.
Lost Everything is the winner of the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Acclaimed SF author Slattery's newest (after Liberation) chronicles two men's journey up the Susquehanna River and through an epically violent dystopian America. Sunny Jim and his friend Reverend Bauxite embark on their quest to locate Sunny Jim's lost son and wife before a nebulous, threatening storm ("the Big One") overtakes them. The ambiguity of the impending destruction is reminiscent of the calamity that preceded Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but Slattery's stream-of-consciousness style doesn't lend itself to effective pacing or moderation death stains page after page, and the despair is so relentless it becomes uninteresting. Though there are moments of somber poetry (e.g., "the last echoes of voices all came together in a fading thrum"), the novel ultimately fails to do what McCarthy did so well to infuse a familiar landscape with enough light so the darkness stands out in relief. Slattery's dystopian U.S. is so bleak and heavy-handedly tragic, readers will likely tire of the trip long before the riverhead.
Customer Reviews
Lost?
I was lost reading this. 120 pages in and couldn't make out the plot. I could care less about the characters was actually rooting for the Big Storm Lost a few hours of my life try to read this disjointed story. Very disappointed
Disappointment
While I would highly recommend both of Slattery's previous novels, this one was impossible for me to enjoy. The lack of a definitive plot would have been acceptable if the reader had any reason to care about the characters, but I gave up after about 70 pages.