I read this book in high school for AP English. It was one of those books that stood out as good despite the topic. So, this year I decided to read it again.
If you haven’t read it, you should. Especially with everything happening in Ukraine right now, the looming fear of nuclear war (I don’t think many people really believe it will happen unless Putin has truly lost his marbles). It’s really a little slice-of-life post-apocalypse story. It’s people in a zone of Florida spared from the worst of the attack.
I like the cast of characters, there is a pretty good variety. I mean, the primary characters are all “good” people, but there are secondary and tertiary characters that are more…. colorful. I personally would have liked to see a few more people from the town, but it’s not a very long book.
There isn’t a strong “plot” in the book. There are basically three acts or arcs. The first is pre-bombs. This is when the character is told by his brother that it’s likely. There’s a chapter outlining the instigating events which lead to the ever-feared-mutual-destruction. The second act is what happens to people in the first few weeks after. Then the third act is the people finding a “new normal.”
I am usually a person who gets into a book and plows through. This one I had to stop a few times. Again, this is all happening with my real-life background of a significant (major? large-scale? globally observed?) land war in Europe. The discussion of nuclear bombs is more real now than almost any time in my life (right after 9/11, I remember talk about terrorist “dirty nukes” but that isn’t the same). So reading about cities disappearing the blink of an eye? Cities I know, cities I’ve visited. I had to stop reading and go “touch grass” a few times.
Once I got deeply into second act, with the visceral reactions over and people trying to discover simple things like “how do I cook without power,” I sunk in and only took about two days to get through the rest of the book. Act three in some ways was my favorite, when they are solving pr.oblems like “replacing antiseptics for the town doctor” and “running out of salt.”
There are a half-dozen aspects of the book I could call out and talk about. Honestly, it is one of the books I’ve gone back to my high school curricula and read and walked away going, “damn, that was a good book.” Up there with How to Kill a Mockingbird and Speak. Books I am honestly grateful teachers exposed me to. If your high school curricula missed this one, you should go back and catch-up. Truly, an exposure to the fears of the 1950’s and a reminder of the strength of humanity in our worst moments.
Dream by Day 