When I was in high school, I had always wanted a relatively unknown book (I hadn’t learned of the term “hipster” at the time) that was weird and not bad. The problem with wanting to read a book like that is the fact that they can’t really be found at your local Barnes & Noble. Luckily, my brother has a knack for finding me weird books that are just my style, and for Christmas, he gave me one: Total Oblivion, More or Less by Alan DeNiro is one of the most surrealist things to have ever come out of the a book (at the time) for me.
Let me first get started by admitting that this is probably not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. For starters: this isn’t a book that’s going to tell you a lot about the background of the world the characters are thrusted in; you just have to go with it, because nothing and no one is going to explain what happened to everything. In that sense, you could say that it starts en media res, with everything having already happened.
About the story: It’s a family drama thrusted into a post-apocalyptic world that literally happened overnight. There are ancient horseman that take over the world, randomly appearing giraffes, a deadly otherworldly virus, and a talking dog. This isn’t a story that’s easy to understand if you’re going for the simple “girl likes boy and must save the world” schtick that seems to be happening with all the books nowadays.
About the plot: It is a family drama, mixed with a post-apocalyptic survival, and some humor. The main protagonist is the sixteen-year-old Macy, who, along with her family, must survive a world where are technology has ceased to exist, and two warring governments/kingdoms/groups are trying to take control of everything. Also, there’s a talking dog. That’s essentially it; it’s a fairly simple story about a girl trying to keep her family together.
The story is probably one of the truest family dramas I’ve read in a long time in that nothing about this family is perfect. The father isn’t the wise and holy figure as they are thought to be, the brother is a horrible person, but for reasons other than being a little brother, and the older sister isn’t at all as free as she has hoped to be. Macy herself isn’t exactly a saint either, nor is she perfect, and not in the whole YA “clumsy” where she trips and makes it look graceful, or is great at all forms of fighting; no, she is one of the most accurate depictions of a teenager who is forced to grow up that I have read.
Total Oblivion is essentially about how life must move forward, no matter the hardships, and it does it by dialing up the hardships to level 11 on a 10-point scale. It’s a heartwarming story that is sure make you smile and contemplate the meaning of family.
It’s also perfect because you now can say that you’ve read something that someone probably hasn’t heard of yet.
