Not Alone

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Sure, humanity did this to themselves, and maybe we should all change our ways before it’s too late.

But it's really painfully bleak, so I don't know if I'd necessarily recommend it or to whom I would. At a time when stepping outside could kill you, Harry is kept indoors at all costs, never venturing beyond the door to their one-bedroom flat. I mean, they barely have food, he doesn't know anything of the outside, he has spent his entire life in his apartment, not even meeting other people. and the atmospheric descriptions of a world wiped out by a microplastic storm place you right in the thick of this dark and terrifying post-apocalyptic setting.I did skim the rest of the book just to see if things ended the way she wanted them too and I am just glad I didn't finish this one. And Katie was an overachiever, really trying to do her best to make a difference for the environment and climate. The toxicity of plastic dust is probably something we should worry about, although perhaps for now, a bit less than Katie does. I think it could have delivered a much more compelling and chilling story if Harry had some sort of survival instinct from the beginning.

Katie forages, hunts the surviving animal population, and provides for Harry, who was born after the storm, and who has never left their little home. During the first months after the storm, Katie ventured out to find Jack, the man she had been due to marry in a few months. When their safety is threatened by the arrival of a stranger, Katie is forced to do the unthinkable and flee the flat, journeying with Harry across a dangerous landscape ravaged by toxic dust. Much of the novel is similarly overdetermined; a flashback to a precatastrophe self-defense class leads directly into a scene where Katie must put those skills to use. At times, the unwritten parts were difficult to work through and I found myself just giving up and going along.Katie has become expert at foraging food from surviving plants and trapping rabbits, foxes, sometimes a dog. The bond between Katie and Harry was beautiful to read, and you could really tell how much they loved each other, how Katie would do anything for Harry, and in turn how he also looked after her despite his very young age. It's been a while since I read a book and genuinely hated every single character in it, but this one accomplished that easily. Their safe place now feeling unsafe and after a revelation showing Katie’s fiancé may still be alive, Katie takes Harry on a previously unthinkable journey to find the man she was supposed to marry and a new life for her son.

Very much a survival story, the world Jackson has created is as brutal as they come; it has become a harsh, almost uninhabitable place, and the hardships our two main characters face make this novel feel almost overwhelmingly bleak. Then at the end after 3/4 of the book being about how dangerous and polluted outside was, they end up walking for days in an apparently less polluted Scotland. S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. He provided instructions on where he’s headed and how to start the car he’s thoughtfully left in the parking garage.In the present, Katie worries about plastic dust particles, toxic rainstorms, and encountering other people who might have survived. A microplastic storm has devastated the world and the microplastics are irretrievably on/in every surface and water supply forever.

One I keep thinking about long after I’ve finished reading, and one I’d for sure recommend to readers of Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic fiction. The day of the storm, Jack had been working at a medical clinic in London, and was separated from Katie.

journey to a very distant location she knows nothing about to find her fiancee, ostensibly because she doesn't want her kid to be alone. Woman and son go on road trip across post apocalyptic landscape filled with nothingness, and are arguably too stupid to have survived the first fifty fucking miles, nevermind the remaining 300.