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A review by aaronj21
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
4.0
A thoughtful and moving meditation on Apocalypse.
When the improbably named Isherwood Williams finds himself one of only a handful of survivors left in the wake of a lethal plague he tries to go on living and find meaning after what is essentially the end of the world.
I love contemplative apocalypse stories. I love reading stories where material survival isn’t the sole or only focus after cataclysm, where characters have to grapple with the larger implications of their particular “End”. Books I would shelve in this category include Station Eleven, On the Beach, and the Moon Of The Crusted Snow. I had always assumed this style was a relatively recent literary invention. However, this novel, an exemplar of the subgenre, was written all the way back in the 1940’s.
This was an interesting and immersive read. Its pacing was pleasantly odd and when I thought I knew what was going to happen I was mistaken. Isherwood’s story is intercut with passages from some future historian, possibly Ish himself, describing the decline and changes all around him. This is a book very preoccupied with humanity as a whole, what the dominance of our species meant for all other life on the planet and what our sudden absence would mean for the earth.
The Earth Abides was unlike any other “End of the World” story I’d read before. It was contemplative, bittersweet and vaguely nostalgic.
(Spoilers Ahead)
One of my favorite things about this story was Ish’s whole arc as a character.
Ish tries to single handedly fix the world and create little versions of himself to get the lights back on but ultimately he realizes that he can't do that and it may not even be a good idea if he could. He is in a fundamentally different world now...that's what Apocalypse is. He doesn't abandon his designs entirely; he nudges the new people in a few helpful directions. But ultimately he understands the world will be what *they* make it, it’s theirs now just as the old world was his.
Not everyone will agree, but I thought this was a satisfying and profound way to end the story.
When the improbably named Isherwood Williams finds himself one of only a handful of survivors left in the wake of a lethal plague he tries to go on living and find meaning after what is essentially the end of the world.
I love contemplative apocalypse stories. I love reading stories where material survival isn’t the sole or only focus after cataclysm, where characters have to grapple with the larger implications of their particular “End”. Books I would shelve in this category include Station Eleven, On the Beach, and the Moon Of The Crusted Snow. I had always assumed this style was a relatively recent literary invention. However, this novel, an exemplar of the subgenre, was written all the way back in the 1940’s.
This was an interesting and immersive read. Its pacing was pleasantly odd and when I thought I knew what was going to happen I was mistaken. Isherwood’s story is intercut with passages from some future historian, possibly Ish himself, describing the decline and changes all around him. This is a book very preoccupied with humanity as a whole, what the dominance of our species meant for all other life on the planet and what our sudden absence would mean for the earth.
The Earth Abides was unlike any other “End of the World” story I’d read before. It was contemplative, bittersweet and vaguely nostalgic.
(Spoilers Ahead)
One of my favorite things about this story was Ish’s whole arc as a character.
Ish tries to single handedly fix the world and create little versions of himself to get the lights back on but ultimately he realizes that he can't do that and it may not even be a good idea if he could. He is in a fundamentally different world now...that's what Apocalypse is. He doesn't abandon his designs entirely; he nudges the new people in a few helpful directions. But ultimately he understands the world will be what *they* make it, it’s theirs now just as the old world was his.
Not everyone will agree, but I thought this was a satisfying and profound way to end the story.