{"id":1581,"date":"2011-11-22T01:35:27","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T23:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethingwicked.co.za\/?p=1581"},"modified":"2011-11-22T01:39:15","modified_gmt":"2011-11-21T23:39:15","slug":"things-we-didnt-see-coming-by-steven-amsterdam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/2011\/11\/22\/things-we-didnt-see-coming-by-steven-amsterdam\/","title":{"rendered":"Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam"},"content":{"rendered":"

review by Joe Vaz
\n\"\"<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Published by Harvill Secker
\nPB 199 pages
\nRRP R112 (Kindle $11.99<\/a>) <\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThey catch up in two seconds and start bombarding us with apples. Grandpa stays steady through the pounding. We roll up the windows to protect ourselves. Sad, because we haven\u2019t seen apples in a year and now they\u2019re drumming all over us. Unthinkable, that people could keep apples from other people. Grandma leans in close to Grandpa as he squeezes through the traffic, trying to get away.\u201d<\/em><\/td>\n

\"\"
\nFrom Issue 14 (Oct 2011)<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll get to the point. This is a great book. Buy it now.<\/p>\n

Still not convinced? Okay, here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

I was asked to chair a conversation on post-apocalyptic fiction for this year\u2019s Open Book Festival in Cape Town, so I sat down with Steven Amsterdam\u2019s book and started reading.<\/p>\n

I had never seen anything by this author before but Things We Didn\u2019t See Coming<\/em> sucked me in immediately and completely.<\/p>\n

It begins rather innocuously for a post-apocalypse novel, with a young boy of around nine helping his dad pack food and survival gear hurriedly into the car. It is New Years Eve, 1999, and at midnight the Y2K bug might wipe us all out.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never read a PA book that started in the past, and was immediately intrigued.<\/p>\n

By the time I finished chapter two I was in tears and in love with Amsterdam\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n

This is an exquisitely crafted, beautiful and endearing novel. It is difficult to talk about all the things I loved about it without giving too much away .<\/p>\n

The book is narrated across nine disconnected but chronological episodes. Each chapter sees our narrator at different points in his life; sometimes they\u2019re good, but most often they\u2019re not. In the second chapter we meet the boy again, now a wise-ass teenager. The city he lives in is barricaded, but this doesn\u2019t stop his grandparents from dragging him out on a jaunt that manages to be funny, poignant and heartbreaking all at once. By the next time we see him, things have taken a turn for the worse; incessant rain has caused massive flooding. The protagonist is out rescuing people and bringing them back to shelters, though he\u2019s by no means a hero. And so we are drawn into a world coming apart at the seams, following a man making what he can of a threadbare existence.<\/p>\n

Amsterdam\u2019s strength lies in the effortless way he brings us up to date with how the world is doing now, how much time has passed between chapters, and where we are. With just a few words here and there, he paints a complete picture.\u00a0 Through highs and lows, Amsterdam takes his narrator (and his reader) on a journey across this ravaged country with startling skill.<\/p>\n

The narrator\u2019s sardonic wit keeps us company throughout, making this the anti-Road<\/em>. I found it uplifting and unexpectedly funny, poignant and beautiful. It is scary and thought provoking and it has its moments of darkness, but it\u2019s never bleak.<\/p>\n

Things We Didn\u2019t See Coming<\/em> is a fantastic debut novel from an author whose future work I can\u2019t wait to get my hands on.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\"\"<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

review by Joe Vaz
\n\"\"<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n

Published by Harvill Secker
\n PB 199 pages
\n RRP R112 (Kindle $11.99<\/a>) <\/p>\n

 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThey catch up in two seconds and start bombarding us with apples. Grandpa stays steady through the pounding. We roll up the windows to protect ourselves. Sad, because we haven\u2019t seen apples in a year and now they\u2019re drumming all over us. Unthinkable, that people could keep apples from other people. Grandma leans in close to Grandpa as he squeezes through the traffic, trying to get away.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\"\"\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[126,39,131,132],"class_list":["post-1581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-issue-15","tag-joe-vaz","tag-steven-amsterdam","tag-things-we-didnt-see-coming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1581"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1588,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions\/1588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}