BECAUSE SURVIVAL IS INSUFFICIENT

I just finished a great little book, which I'm dying to tell you about, but don't really know how to describe.

I don't normally read or watch movies about pandemics. They scare me to death because they hit a little too close to home. I used to think it was nuclear weapons that would do us in. Then I thought it might be global warming and lack of water. Now I'm fairly certain that it will be a simple strain of flu that we just weren't prepared for, and that's the premise behind this book. But it's not so much about what happens during the pandemic as it is about the 15 or 20 years afterwards, and the very few people who survive it.

The main character is Kirsten, a child actress at the time of the collapse who, 15 years later, is an actress with the Traveling Symphony -- a small troupe of actors and musicians which travels  the Great Lakes area, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Tatooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient."

One of the first things to fail was all forms of communication. Phone service, internet, television, newspapers, transportation -- all of that disappeared in a matter of weeks, when there were no longer enough healthy people to support the infrastructure. It really gets one to thinking about how our kids, who never knew anything before the internet/google/smart phone age, would actually deal with all of this. Sometimes I even found myself wondering who was luckier -- the few who managed to survive the disease, or those who were quick to succumb? That sounds depressing I know, but the book is actually full of beauty and life and humanity as well.

Perhaps this Kirkus review I found on the back cover sums it up best: "An ambitious take on a post-apocalyptic world where some strive to preserve art, culture, and kindness...Think of Cormac McCarthy seesawing with Joan Didion...Magnetic...A breakout novel."