“Life As We Knew It” 2006 YA science fiction novel by New Yorker Susan Beth Pfeffer

The Anti-Heinlein, October 21, 2007
This is the diary of a teen-aged girl, kept when a meteor hits the moon, moves it closer to earth, and life turns really, really gross. Miranda has moods and writes in her diary, her divorced Mom buys up all the food in town, her brothers chop down trees, and everybody else dies.

A typical teen-diary novel, this has been accused of being Anti-Christian, anti-conservative, and anti-science. I'll examine these one by one...

ANTI-CHRISTIAN: Miranda's friend Megan and her pastor are portrayed as religious fanatics and hypocrits. No other characters in the book show any knowledge, interest, or awareness of religion. Pretty one-sided. Had a Jewish girl and her rabbi been portrayed in this way, the book would have been unpublishable. GUILTY.

ANTI-CONSERVATIVE: The government should have know and done something. The President and his friends have all the food in Texas. Everybody with a gun is bad. Pretty liberal stuff. Although I kept thinking that Mom was supposed to be representing the hypocricy of liberalism -- a big talker who when push comes to shove, hordes food and gas, refuses to help her neighbors, and who's survival strategy ends up being to hole up until the government she despises rescues her and starts delivering welfare Not sure what auther Pfeffer's irony level is, though. Assume GUILTY. ((Update: Checked her web-page. Definately GUILTY))

ANTI-SCIENCE: I know this is a teenage girl's diary, and everyone knows, "girls aren't good at science and math stuff," but this is science fiction, and that kind of would demand some attempt at explanation. Some character to try and explain the events -- make college brother a science major instead of a philosphy student (snicker), make Mom's doctor boyfriend take guesses, have there be a radio station that only comes in every once in a while, or have Miranda find a fraky old book from the 1960s in the attic.

[go to amazon for the rest]

The wrong message, September 27, 2007
By Reader

What should you do if a sudden natural disaster - an asteroid hitting the moon - causes tsunamis to drown both coasts, destroying our electrical and communications grid, and provoking new volcanic eruptions that obscure the sun? Should you band together with others to distribute available food and fuel to the needy and find alternative ways to grow food? Not in this book, at least. Here the heroine mom thinks to clean out the food stores before anyone else realizes the extent of the disaster. She retreats to her home with her wood stove and denies food from her well-stocked pantry to anyone other than her immediate family. While she thinks the country's president, who has been evacuated from the flooded Washington D.C. to his "Texas ranch" (wink, wink), is an "evil jerk," she hunkers down in her home waiting to be bailed out by the government that he heads; failing that, she will starve, or die of disease. If this happens to you, make sure to be entirely selfish while you're waiting for government handouts (while simultaneously despising the hand that feeds you). What sort of message is this for teens, or anyone else?

Senseless Book, May 25, 2007
By Louise

This book has a strong anti-Christian bias. I wouldn't call it minor like a previous reviewer. Also, the book made no sense. They had no electricity, and yet they had hot coffee in the mornings. Somehow they baked their own bread with no electricity. One time the electricity came on and they started washing clothes. The electricity went off before the clothes were finished so they had to rinse them off in the bathtub. Without electricity, where did they get water for the bathtub??? Supposedly they lived in the country with their own well. Wells don't pump water without electricity. It just wasn't a very intelligent, well thought out book. Save your money