Everyone Says That at the End of the World

March 4, 2013
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. Agent: Matt Bialer, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates

March 1, 2013
The world ends in Austin, Texas, and a multitude of less cool venues, in Egerton's seriocomic, eschatological whimsy. The thing is, nobody has time for the apocalypse. Milton Post and his lover, Rica, nervously expecting an unplanned child, just want to spend some quiet time together. Hayden Brock, a TV actor Rica fell in love with when she was 13, is on the run from video footage that shows his post-Emmy party ending with a tender moment between him and a goat. Roy Clamp, a member of Pearl-Swine, the band that kicked Milton out, is up for anything but isn't exactly a paragon of initiative. Click, a hermit crab, reacts even more passively to outside forces. So as the signs and tokens begin to multiply--Dr. Kip Warner hawks the Lifepods that are supposed to keep the elect safe through the holocaust, sewer inspector Kiefer Bran finds an underground river of blood, heretofore inoffensive nutria overrun Austin and attack its retail establishments--you'd think the cast would be caught flat-footed. But they aren't: They keep moving in response to forces they can't understand. As Egerton (The Book of Harold, 2010, etc.) piles on the analogies among the bemused Milton, the suddenly adrift Hayden and Click the crab, a surprisingly coherent spirituality emerges from the picaresque farce. If the end of the world doesn't quite live up to its advance publicity, well, that's happened often enough before. A brainy, often riotous, ultimately moving Cat's Cradle for our time peopled with reluctant seekers of spiritual nourishment who might have stepped from the pages of Flannery O'Connor.

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March 15, 2013

After witnessing the crazed death of his physicist father, Milton meanders through unfocused studies, a stint in a Christian-rock band, and other noodlings until alien time travelers inform him that he will be a major player in the impending end of the world. With pregnant girlfriend Rica in tow, he and buddy Roy scurry across the Southwest, dodging nutria, hailstones, and volcanoes. They're in search of an arrogant actor who has partied himself out of his role as TV's Saint Rick, but who may now be a real saint. Egerton (The Book of Harold) juggles farce, religious satire, philosophy, and a road trip as a slew of characters converge in a manic quest. A well-traveled hermit crab, 38 mistreated Jesus clones, sleep-deprived monks, and an oft-exchanged prosthetic leg figure into this rollicking madhouse of an apocalypse. VERDICT Egerton is very funny, and his novel succeeds when he goes for laughs, but loses coherence when he turns to philosophy. Likewise, his slacker characters are fun for a silly ramble, less likable as they flail through muddled relationships.--Neil Hollands, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2013
The author of The Book of Harold (2012) once again takes a tongue-in-cheek look at religion in this end-of-the-world tale. The story follows four characters during Earth's last days: unlikely visionary Milton; his pregnant girlfriend, Rica; self-absorbed TV star Hayden; and a hermit crab named Click. Milton, whose father committed suicide in an attempt to prove the existence of parallel universes, starts to see the same alien creatures his father saw and comes to realize the appearance of these Floaters heralds doom for the planet. The end is coming in the form of a collapsed star, which is due to collide with Earth in four days. As the planet descends into chaos, Milton and Rica, along with RoyMilton's best friend and former bandmate from his Christian rock daysset off on a collision course with Hayden, who is fleeing his former hedonistic life, and Click, who is on an epic journey of his own. Though it meanders at times, this sharp-witted satire offers up more than a few laughs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)