We Are Unprepared

July 4, 2016
In her debut novel, Reilly offers a timely and terrifying, if at times heavy-handed, vision of impending climate-change-triggered devastation, both environmental and interpersonal. In their mid-30s, Ash and his wife, Pia, feel they’ve outgrown the self-conscious artifice of their hipster lives in Brooklyn. So they retreat to Ash’s native Vermont, purchasing a secluded woodland home and embarking on what they hope is a simpler life. But the couple’s personal worries and disputes over failing to conceive a child soon pale in comparison to their much deeper conflicts prompted by a looming weather event dubbed simply the Storm. Pia feels great kinship with the local survivalist “prepper” movement, while Ash puts his faith in the systems set up by his newly reclaimed community. After months of increasingly bizarre and unpredictable weather, the couple’s relationship (not to mention their respective preparations) are put to a dramatic test. Although the narrative tends to lapse into preachy philosophizing, the situations Reilly describes seem unsettlingly plausible (even if the meteorologists of the near future seem to possess uncannily prescient forecasting skills). Ultimately, Ash’s story points to human connection, rather than radical isolationism, as the key to surviving a crisis, a message that will uplift readers.

June 15, 2016
Can a Vermont couple, recently transplanted from Brooklyn, survive the worst weather disaster in recorded history?Ash, 35, is newly arrived in Isole (pop. 6,481) with Pia, his beautiful but highly neurotic wife. They have given up lucrative urban careers to "grow things and build things, preserve things and pickle things," and otherwise live authentic lives. But three months after their move, U.S. authorities announce that a natural disaster, referred to as The Storm, is on its way, in the form of "as many as thirty named tropical storms and hurricanes," plus "likely heat waves and drought, and even severe blizzards." The stressed-out populace slowly sheds "the thin veneer of civility," and Ash and Pia's marriage predictably begins to unravel. The Storm is slow moving, though; the public finds out about it in September, but it doesn't arrive until spring. By that point, 19 chapters into the book, the reader is eager for the damn storm to occur. The two by then hate each other. It's not surprising--they spend almost every waking hour together in this thinly populated book. Only August, a neglected neighborhood boy whom Ash comes to care for and love, and Maggie, a comely fellow Isoleen he covets, come alive. The Storm is an all-purpose metaphor: the apocalypse; climate change; and, most of all, the powerful forces that tear marriages apart. Debut novelist Reilly, a former official in the Obama White House Office of Management and Budget, makes a rookie mistake and reveals on the first page of the book that the narrator survives the deluge. By the last page, soaked readers are unlikely to care. With so many dark clouds and heavy-handed portents, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

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July 1, 2016
Ash and Pia are married hipsters living in Brooklyn. Seeking a more authentic life, they buy a farmhouse in Vermont. Happy but a little isolated in this rustic town, they grow increasingly alarmed at the weather reports. A superstorm preceded by strange weather and changes in the natural cycles is expected to destroy much of the eastern seaboard. The upcoming storm causes a variety of reactions in their small town. Some members find religion, while some join a prepper movement. Pia becomes one of the preppers, while Ash works with the small local government to better prepare the town for the upcoming devastation. Their different reactions to the impending doom cause a rift in their marriage. Reilly, a former employee of the Environmental Defense Fund and native Vermonter, does an amazing job detailing the storm and the changes to nature that come with it. Never preachy or didactic, Reilly shows the costs of ignoring major problemswhether in a marriage, government, infrastructure, or the environmentand the deadly consequences of such ignorance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2016

Whether intentionally or not, Reilly's first novel, a climate-change cautionary tale, succeeds most when considered as a transitional book for the last decade's teens, now in their 20s and entering adulthood. After spending those formative years with Suzanne Collins's grand-scale, postapocalyptic worldbuilding in The Hunger Games and more intimate, closer-to-home aftermath stories such as Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It, this book will hold undeniable appeal. Unlike Katniss and Life's Miranda, though, unreliable narrator Ash and his impulsive wife, Pia, are not so appealing (and neither are many supporting characters). Soon after they move from Brooklyn to Vermont, a devastating storm is predicted for their area. Pia wants to team up with off-the-grid "preppers," while Ash aligns himself with others in the town. Their dizzyingly bad choices prove the characters to be worthy of the book's title and push the limits of the reader's patience. Ash's deluded understanding of himself smacks more of Nick in Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl than any plucky YA heroine. VERDICT Any book group will have lots to discuss here, for good or for ill, and readers who identify with new adult or hover on the precipice to start reading adult literary fiction would be served well.--Nicole Steeves, Fox River Valley P.L. Dist., IL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2016

After Ash and Pia move from Brooklyn to Vermont, hoping to revitalize their lives, a terrible superstorm bears down on the Eastern Seaboard, and the town splinters into those who want to work together and those out only to protect themselves--a fault line evident in Ash and Pia's marriage. From a former treasury spokesperson under President Obama; a big hit at ALA Midwinter and slated for BEA and ALA promotion.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.