A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Fortunately, this entertaining ride isn’t over yet, as a cliffhanger ending makes clear.Ī fun, contemporary adventure that cares about who we are as humans, especially when faced with remarkable events.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Green is clearly interested in how social media moves the needle on our culture, and he uses April’s fame, choices, and moral quandaries to reflect on the rending of social fabric.
Meanwhile, the story bobs along on adolescent humor and otherworldly phenomena seeded with very real threats, not least among them a professional hater named Peter Petrawicki and his feral followers. April and her friends are amiable goofballs and drawn genuinely for their age and time. “None of us older than twenty-five years old, cruising down Santa Monica Boulevard, planning our press strategy for the announcement of First Contact with a space alien,” says April.
After they discover a complex riddle involving the Queen song “Don’t Stop Me Now,” the mystery becomes a quest for April Andy April’s roommate/kind-of-sort-of girlfriend, Maya a scientist named Miranda and April’s new assistant, Robin, to figure out what the Carls are doing here.
April’s life is turned upside down when the video goes massively viral and immovable Carls appear in cities around the world. She phones her videographer friend Andy Skampt, who posts on YouTube a funny introduction to the robot she dubs Carl.
On her way home late one night, April encounters an armored humanoid figure, which turns out to be alien in nature-“And I don’t mean alien like ‘weird,’" she says. It’s endearing how fully he occupies his narrator, a 20-something bi artist named April May who is wasting her youth slaving at a Manhattan startup. Luckily, he applies wit, affection, and cultural intelligence to a comic sci-fi novel suitable for adults and mature teens. A young graphic artist inspires worldwide hysteria when she accidentally makes first contact with an alien.įamous multimedia wunderkind Green is brother to that John Green, so no pressure or anything on his debut novel.
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