California - Edan Lepucki

The beginning of the end

The best thing about Edan Lepucki's California is not just the way that the author envisions and describes the social breakdown of a near-future United States, but the fact that she makes it seem scarily inevitable. It's closer to JG Ballard then than the more fashionable Cormac McCarthy that California will inevitably and misleadingly be compared to. While it's just as good as capturing that sense of a world turned upside down by natural disaster - with some man-made assistance - and even has some of Ballard's ambiguous character types, California doesn't quite bring it all together into a conceptual whole with the same sense of deranged visionary zeal as Ballard.  

Only touched upon in passing, the sense of what has happened to the US is nonetheless convincingly real in the light of disasters like Hurricane Katrina. A cataclysmic earthquake, the depletion of oil reserves, a few other natural disasters and a flu epidemic following in quick succession and it's surprising how rapidly all the institutions we once relied upon for security and stability collapse. In the aftermath of the crisis - one that it appears that has slowly gaining momentum rather than happening in one big crash - society has been reduced to a few isolated Communities zealously guarding what they can grab hold of, protecting themselves from Pirates and other individuals striking out and attempting to live on what little patch of land they can manage.

Lepucki's depiction of Cal and Frida is likewise subtle and realistic in how they each view and relate to this new reality, giving a personal view of the situation and hinting at some wider implications. Frida's brother Micah, who was involved in activism and terrorism prior to the eventual collapse, extends that look back to the past and gives some background on the days leading up to it, while the fact that Frida believes she is pregnant has implications and concerns about what the future holds. This forces them to seek help from one of the secretive communities, where they meet Mikey. More of an ambiguous Ballard figure, revelling in his newfound position of power and better equipped to cope with its challenges, he represents just how closely linked and interdependent are the forces of order and chaos.

Having set this all up so well and holding you through the revelations, California never really seems to amount to anything however and there's a sense that it kind of fizzles out. We are left with implications of further unrest and upheaval to come, which does provide a suitably sinister open-endedness, but there's also the feeling that Edan Lepucki hasn't really been able to satisfactorily bring all these intriguing elements into something greater. There's surely a lot more to explore here however, so perhaps a follow-up isn't out of the question. At the very least we have an interesting new author here who can write well and engage with important contemporary issues that will eventually affect us all.