A mordantly funny, all-too-real novel in the vein of Tom Perotta and
Emma Straub about a suburban American family who have to figure out how
to survive themselves and their neighbors in the wake of a global
calamity that upends all of modern life.
It's Tuesday morning in Lincolnwood, New Jersey, and all four members of
the Altman family are busy ignoring each other en route to work and
school. Dan, a lawyer turned screenwriter, is preoccupied with
satisfying his imperious TV producer boss's creative demands.
Seventeen-year-old daughter Chloe obsesses over her college application
essay and the state tennis semifinals. Her vape-addicted little brother,
Max, silently plots revenge against a thuggish freshman classmate. And
their MBA-educated mom Jen, who gave up a successful business career to
raise the kids, is counting the minutes until the others vacate the
kitchen and she can pour her first vodka of the day.
Then, as the kids begin their school day and Dan rides a commuter train
into Manhattan, the world comes to a sudden, inexplicable stop. Lights,
phones, laptops, cars, trains...the entire technological infrastructure
of 21st-century society quits working. Normal life, as the Altmans and
everyone else knew it, is over.
Or is it?
Over four transformative, chaotic days, this privileged but clueless
American family will struggle to hold it together in the face of water
shortages, paramilitary neighbors, and the well-mannered looting of the
local Whole Foods as they try to figure out just what the hell is going
on.
