I think this was supposed to be the novel that really marked the departure from Generation X and Microserfs, and indeed it feels a lot more like Hey Nostradamus! than the earlier novels. His common themes of teenage loss, pregnancy, the loss of aims and values in twenty-somthings and so on recur. The first half is much like his other work, but then halfway through the book the world ends. The post-apocalyptic world is increasingly strange. In the end, I'm not sure it works. By no means a poor book, I still find it inferior to the other novels of his I've read.
Posted 2004-08-28.