Everyone Says That at the End of the World
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this “often riotous, ultimately moving Cat’s Cradle for our time,” a Texas couple prepares for the apocalypse (Kirkus Reviews).
In Austin, Milton and Rica are expecting their first child. It’s four days and counting. Not for the baby. But for the end of the world. Evidence: Haydon Brock, a godless television star has suddenly traded his Hollywood fame for salvation. A prophetic hermit crab is embarking on an unfathomable cross-country quest. Planes are dropping from the sky. And the president and first lady disappear. No omen is too inexplicable to Milton. He’s learned for a fact that our planet is one vast asylum for the incurably insane. And its cosmic guardians are about to close down the whole damn thing.
Then Milton receives one more premonition: to seek out Haydon now holed up somewhere in Marfa. To what end Milton hasn’t a clue. To find out, Milton, Rica, and their best friend head west across an increasingly cataclysmic landscape of inter-dimensional time travelers, Jesus clones, sleep-deprived monks, ghosts, and angels in an epic and manic quest to outrun the last days on Earth.
Combining humor, philosophical inquiry and an unforgettable cast of characters, “this sharp-witted satire” (Booklist) “is a future classic, and people will be reading [it] decades from now. I know I will” (Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reading like a mash-up of Twilight Zone tropes, Egerton's end-of-days novel introduces us to Milton and Rica, an Austin, Tex., couple expecting their first child; Hayden Brock, a godless TV star who abruptly quits Hollywood and goes in search of salvation; and Click, a peripatetic hermit crab. As they go about their lives, satellites and planes fall from the sky, the president and the first lady go missing, and panic seizes the country. Only Milton is privy to the fact that the world will end in four days. A "Non-Man" appears before him and explains that Earth is really an asylum for the mentally ill, and the cosmic keepers are about to close it down. Then, Milton receives a premonition to seek out Hayden in Marfa. Accompanied by Roy, his best friend from college, Milton and Rica head west through an increasingly frenzied landscape of Jesus clones, ghosts, and angel-like beings called Floaters. This novel from Egerton (The Book of Harold) really doesn't get dramatic until the end of the world is truly imminent. By then, though, the author's moving depiction of the human survival instinct transcending the apocalypse has become smothered under an increasingly unwieldy narrative.
