Echo of the Boom

February 3, 2014
In this debut novel, Neely-Cohen’s four teenage protagonists are superlatives—coldest, strongest, most clever, and most popular in turn. In a contemporary Washington, D.C., and under the shadow of impending doom, the story unfolds in increments of time “before the end.” Technology is now an extension of self, and so naturally teens use it to bully, hack, and spy. Chloe is a queen bee whose powers of manipulation have left her jaded and haunted by night terrors. Efram is a teenage Gatsby. Molly is a gun-toting apocalypse prepster. Steven travels the globe on shady ventures with his father, a consultant, and where Steven goes, death follows. In a world of genre-mashing garage deejays, and a text message to replace every utterance, adults are as squawking and clueless as the adults in Peanuts. But beneath the labored pop culture references, the novel conveys a simple message: yes, the world is miserable, but technology can’t take all of the blame. These young adults are of the generation “born after the fall of the wall but before the fall of the towers.” In such chaotic times, they understand full well that a trigger can’t pull itself.

March 15, 2014
They were all born after the fall of the wall but before the fall of the towers, the author writes about the four main characters in his ambitious first novel: Chloe, the mean queen of her high school who has nuclear nightmares; Molly, whose father is a paranoid survivalist; wealthy Efram, a genius of disorder who makes a habit of being expelled from pricey private schools; and Steven, whose philandering father is a shady international entrepreneur always looking for the main chance. What do these four teens have in common? They're all waiting, in their respective ways, for the end of days. Clearly intended to be adolescent Horsemen of the Apocalypse (each of the book's seven sections is introduced with a quotation from the biblical book of Revelation), the four lead lives overshadowed by intimations of disorder, deprivation, destruction, and death. Set largely in Washington, DC, the novel offers a disturbing vision of an unapologetically violent, pre-apocalyptic America in the unfolding lives of the four teens. Though there is enough material here for four novels, the often discursive content coheres nicely at its end.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)