Monday, June 16, 2008

the dead & the gone

the dead & the gone: A Novel by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Seventeen-year-old Alex, the son of a Puerto Rican New York City working-class family, attends college-prep Vincent de Paul on scholarship. An after-school job and chores assigned by his building superintendent father keep Alex focused on a better future, with ambitions of attending an Ivy League school through study, hard work and a little faith. But when his parents fail to return home after the catastrophic environmental events following the moon's altered gravitational pull, Alex suddenly faces the reality of survival and the obligation to protect his two younger sisters.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

...I was excited to find out about this companion book to Life As We Knew It, but when I finally sat down to read it I was sorely disappointed. While the idea to show an urban viewpoint of the moon disaster was a good one, the main character, Alex, was so unbelievably stupid, infuriatingly unresourceful, and intensely unlikable that I didn't care if he lived or died. I highly recommend reading LAWKI, but I would skip this one.

Anonymous said...

The powerful images and wrenching tragedies will haunt readers.

La-la said...

Dead and the Gone
I thought this book would be as in depth and detailed as Life As We Knew It, but I was mistaken. This book is written to show the same crisis with the moon from the vantage point of a big city. I was disappointed in the characters, which were hard to get to know and I thought, kind of stupid for being inner city kids. It did show the struggles they went through to find food but they weren't very creative and were starving instead of breaking down empty apartment doors to look for food?? That didn't make sense to me.
As I found this book so disappointing I gave it 2 1/2 *'s.