LS 5623 Life As We Knew It

Pfeffer, Susan Beth. Life As We Knew It. Harcourt, Inc: Orlando , Fl, 2006.

ISBN: 0-15-205826-5

“Here’s the funny thing about the world coming to an end. Once it gets going, it doesn’t seem to stop,” writes sixteen year old Miranda as she chronicles her life just before and after a devastating lunar event. A meteor has hit the moon and knocked out of orbit, bringing it closer to Earth. At first, things seem to continue on as normal. Then the storms start and the temperature changes dramatically. Tsunamis hit and drown every coastal city and dormant volcanoes begin to erupt all over the world. The town’s businesses begin to close up (if they aren’t looted first) and soon the only thing open is the post office, hospital, and occasional gas station where one can buy ten dollar-a-gallon gas. While all this is happening, Miranda is just trying to keep it together and stay sane in the new madness.

Miranda evolves, reluctantly, from a teen with petty self-centered wants to a mature, get-things-done young woman. Teens reading this may wonder how they would react to this situation and can see an option on reaction through Miranda. Miranda’s reactions to the situations are typically teen but border on the desperation for wanting something normal. She binges on a bag of chocolate chips that she thinks her mother purposely hides from her after months of eating – starving, really – nothing but canned food and it makes her character grounded in reality while trying to live and cope in a fantastical situation.

The October 2006 issue of the School Library Journal states “Pfeffer keeps nearly all of the death and explicit violence offstage, focusing instead on the stresses of spending months huddled in increasingly confined quarters, watching supplies dwindle, and wondering whether there will be any future to make the effort worthwhile.” In the end, Miranda’s self-less actions and the consequences of those actions offer a ray of light into the newly darkened world. The day by day format of the novel makes the situation intense and leaves Miranda’s emotions lingering long after the last page is read and makes the reader grateful for the world we live in now. There is a companion book, The Dead & the Gone as well as a sequel to both, This World We Live In or the Gone series by Michael Grant .