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Fiction. Literature. HTML: In her highly anticipated new novel, Judy Blume, the New York Times # 1 best-selling author of Summer Sisters and of young adult classics such as Are You There God? Itâ??s Me, Margaret, creates a richly textured and moving story of three generations of families, friends and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed by unexpected events. In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, she paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and placeâ??Nat King Cole singing â??Unforgettable,â?ť Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, young (and not-so-young) love, explosive friendships, A-bomb hysteria, rumors of Communist threat. And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on. In the Unlikely Event is vintage Judy Blume, with all the hallmarks of Judy Blumeâ??s unparalleled storytelling, and full of memorable characters who cope with loss, remember the good times and, finally, wonder at the joy that keeps them going. Early reviewers have already weighed in: â??Like many family stories, this one is not without its life-changing secrets and surprises. There is no surprise that the book is smoothly written, and its story compelling. The settingâ??the early 1950sâ??is especially well realized through period references and incidents.â?ť â??Booklist (starred review) and â??In Blumeâ??s latest adult novel . . . young and old alike must learn to come to terms with technological disaster and social change. Her novel is characteristically accessible, frequently charming and always deeply human.â?ť â??Publishers Weekly… (more)
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User reviews
Excellent character development
Wonderful depiction of the 50's in all of its glory and horror
Every character felt so very real and so very human, Blume has always excelled at this
Interesting to see all of the different types of families depicted
You can see how much the story
Some absolutely brilliant wise words about life, family, love, loss and growing up
The Not So Good Stuff
Really not a good idea to read this just before you are about to get on a plane (FYI, started 2 days before I was leaving to visit Toronto, I picked my seats at the back of the plane, because of this book)
Way too many characters, hard to keep track of everyone's storyline
Really wanted to love it, as I have enjoyed the authors other works, but it just felt rushed and all over the place. I blame myself for having high expectations as well
Favorite Quotes/Passages
"Life is a series of unlikely events, isn’t it? Hers certainly is. One unlikely event after another, adding up to a rich, complicated whole. And who knows what’s still to come?
"What was it with boys in her class? Was it that they liked the idea of spaceships and zombies? Was it too scary to think about what really made the planes crash ?"
"Miri, sweetheart-life is hard," Henry said. "but its worth the struggle."
3 Deweys
I received this from Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review
Excellent character development
Wonderful depiction of the 50's in all of its glory and horror
Every character felt so very real and so very human, Blume has always excelled at this
Interesting to see all of the different types of families depicted
You can see how much the story
Some absolutely brilliant wise words about life, family, love, loss and growing up
The Not So Good Stuff
Really not a good idea to read this just before you are about to get on a plane (FYI, started 2 days before I was leaving to visit Toronto, I picked my seats at the back of the plane, because of this book)
Way too many characters, hard to keep track of everyone's storyline
Really wanted to love it, as I have enjoyed the authors other works, but it just felt rushed and all over the place. I blame myself for having high expectations as well
Favorite Quotes/Passages
"Life is a series of unlikely events, isn’t it? Hers certainly is. One unlikely event after another, adding up to a rich, complicated whole. And who knows what’s still to come?
"What was it with boys in her class? Was it that they liked the idea of spaceships and zombies? Was it too scary to think about what really made the planes crash ?"
"Miri, sweetheart-life is hard," Henry said. "but its worth the struggle."
3 Deweys
I received this from Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review
I was excited to read "In the Unlikely Event" because I really felt assured that I would enjoy it.
It was well written and the plot moves right along. There are a lot more characters than I was expecting and I'll admit I had a little bit of a hard time keeping every one straight at first (especially all the young boys). I found the subject a little tough though.
**Spoiler Alert?**** this is all on the back jacket of the book so its not really spoily.
Like any anxious flyer - I found reading about historic crashes pretty difficult. Blume paints a pretty vivid picture of the tragedies. I made it though, and I even flew once while I was reading this! (maybe not the best choice - but I was in the middle of it, so...)
I enjoyed it, I found it absorbing. The characters were interesting and the story was fresh. I would definitely recommend it. But maybe a better choice for sitting around the pool than for a long plane ride.
In the Unlikely Event is a story sort of based on Judy Blume's life: she grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the flight-path of Newark International Airport, in the 1950's during the time of a major plane crash. I don't think it's a spoiler to say as much because the cover is pretty on-the-nose.
Blume's stand-in is Miri, a teenager living with her single mother and her grandmother in the apartment downstairs. There's a large cast of characters surrounding Miri: her friends, her family, and several other people in Elizabeth, so there are stories about the plane crash from many perspectives. It's a coming-of-age story with the background of dealing with a horrible plane crash in her neighborhood, and Blume's strength is in creating realistic characters. Some aren't totally fleshed out because her focus is on a teenage girl who doesn't know everything about older people's lives, but that's not a problem with the story.
I really liked this book: I could tell that it was a story that wasn't just dashed off, and it didn't tell stories about a tragedy just for the sake of drama.
In the Unlikely Event is a story sort of based on Judy Blume's life: she grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the flight-path of Newark International Airport, in the 1950's during the time of a major plane crash. I don't think it's a spoiler to say as much because the cover is pretty on-the-nose.
Blume's stand-in is Miri, a teenager living with her single mother and her grandmother in the apartment downstairs. There's a large cast of characters surrounding Miri: her friends, her family, and several other people in Elizabeth, so there are stories about the plane crash from many perspectives. It's a coming-of-age story with the background of dealing with a horrible plane crash in her neighborhood, and Blume's strength is in creating realistic characters. Some aren't totally fleshed out because her focus is on a teenage girl who doesn't know everything about older people's lives, but that's not a problem with the story.
I really liked this book: I could tell that it was a story that wasn't just dashed off, and it didn't tell stories about a tragedy just for the sake of drama.
I was excited to read "In the Unlikely Event" because I really felt assured that I would enjoy it.
It was well written and the plot moves right along. There are a lot more characters than I was expecting and I'll admit I had a little bit of a hard time keeping every one straight at first (especially all the young boys). I found the subject a little tough though.
**Spoiler Alert?**** this is all on the back jacket of the book so its not really spoily.
Like any anxious flyer - I found reading about historic crashes pretty difficult. Blume paints a pretty vivid picture of the tragedies. I made it though, and I even flew once while I was reading this! (maybe not the best choice - but I was in the middle of it, so...)
I enjoyed it, I found it absorbing. The characters were interesting and the story was fresh. I would definitely recommend it. But maybe a better choice for sitting around the pool than for a long plane ride.
“Fifteen-year-old Miri (Miriam) Ammerman, narrates the story. She lives with her unmarried mother, Rusty (Naomi), her grandmother, Irene, and her Uncle Henry, a newspaper reporter. Like most 1950s American teens, Miri’s biggest worries are friends, homework and boys, until a Miami Airlines plane plunges into the Elizabeth River in December of 1951. Blume brings not just Miri and her family to life, but many of the passengers on those doomed flights. Although the tragic incidents are real, the characters are not. The title is based on the words of the flight attendant at the start of a flight. The book is based on how people react if and when that unlikely event occurs.
In an attempt to bring the time period of the early fifties to life, and what I believe was an attempt to honor the victims and witnesses of the multiple plane crashes, Blume has written a story that shows how they were all were ultimately effected by those events. It shows how they suffered not only from the loss of friends and family at the time, but how the fear engendered by the events, along with the grief and memories, lasted far into the future bringing along unintended consequences. There were many victims, not only those on the plane or their friends and families. There were those hidden in the shadows, those who merely witnessed the events, those whom the plane narrowly missed and those who participated in the rescues or in identifying the victims. They suffered long lasting effects from those terrible memories. In the present and in the future, the paths of their lives were altered.
As Blume takes us on a journey through those tumultuous months, she also introduces the famous historic events of the times and the story is quite nostalgic for those of us with memories of that era. She gives voice to the politics and morality of that time which are viewed very differently today. I, as a reader, could not help wondering if the tumultuous fifties, which began a trend of loosening morality, did not usher in much of the travails that the world faces today. In the fifties, it was a much simpler time, with clearer rules to follow, as opposed to today when rules are loose and anything and everything seems to be an appropriate behavior. Those t houghts aside, I do remember Hoover vacuums, although my mom had a Kirby. I remember Ronson lighters. I had one. I remember Esterbrook pens because I had one of those too. Deviled eggs and chicken ala king were the fare of middle-income homes. Dixie cup ice creams were a treat. Nylon slips were the fashion and Noxema skin cream, with its distinctive scent, was good for all your skin’s needs, including sunburn! There were no designer cosmetics like there are today. Children’s feet were fluoroscoped, kids necked in cars, and there were homes for orphans and unwed mothers. Women went to college to earn an MRS. and married to have sex. Working outside the home was frowned upon and only women who had to work went to business, as it was called then. My father was terrified of Joe McCarthy and my cousin came home from the Korean War with his hair turned white. Women who were unable to bear children were frowned upon as if it was their fault and divorce was considered shameful. There was no such thing as a legal abortion and many women died in the back rooms of unqualified doctors.
Having experienced that time period in my own life, although I am somewhat younger, and having suffered my own traumatic plane experience as a teenager, an event which prevented me from flying for two decades and wiped out my dream of becoming a stewardess (I wore glasses so I couldn’t anyway, you were required to have perfect vision), I have to admit this book was a hard read for me. Still, the book made me wonder if we were better off then, than we are today, with our different fears, not of the duck and cover type, not of the gangsters like Bugsy Siegel, not of student sit-ins which shut down schools, although that still occurs today and still today serves to dumb down education, rather than improve it, not of aliens or nuclear war, but of the constant threat of terrorism at any time and any place. Today, with the lack of a stay at home parent, we have more crime and more gangs on the street. Today we study sociological subjects more often than the three “R’s” which would serve our students better when they searched for employment.
It was a dark and gloomy book, at times, with far too many characters that often taxed the reader’s memory, with the mention of far too many societal ills (I would be hard put to think of one that was left out), and it ended in a somewhat fairytale way, since most of the characters featured, that suffered the trauma, eventually wound up with very satisfying and accomplished lives, even if it wasn’t the life they originally planned for themselves. Secrets and choices seriously affected the outcomes of many of the character’s lives, in unexpected ways, but in the end, everyone seemed to live happily ever after, and that surprised me. I was also surprised that some very poor behavior was totally acceptable, and everyone seemed to find their own prince or princess in the end. In a nice touch, the book ends with the names and ages of the victims being read off at a ceremony honoring them. Also all of the relationships introduced found ways to work themselves out. Parents forgave children, friends forgave friends and children forgave parents. Would real life have turned out that way?
While the reader read the story in a comfortable, resonant voice, accenting important moments with appropriate stress, her portrayal of Miri seemed to be the same when she was 15 as when she was 50. She still sounded innocent and immature and was speaking in a childlike manner. Miri was simply too perfect and level-headed a character to be realistic to me, since even as a teen, when she should have felt some need to rebel, she was well behaved and obedient. If she was fashioned after Judy Blume as a teenager, than Judy’s family was lucky to have such a “perfect” child. Because the book raises so many issues that society has to confront, I think it would be a good book for discussion groups. I also think it is more of a crossover, YA to adult, rather than an adult book.
In the end, I thought a philosophical message seemed to be imparted by one of the rather young characters. She says that “not all unlikely events are bad!” I also wondered if the ultimate message was that while “not all unlikely events are bad”, they also mark a period of new beginnings, even as they mark an untimely end to some that were planned. The book deals with how all different victims deal with their grief and recovery. It showed the long and short term effects of the tragedy on its victims.
While the tone and style of Blume’s writing remains remarkably familiar, the subject of this novel is quite different from what some may expect. Inspired by a series of passenger airplanes crashed in Elizabeth, New Jersey within a three-month period in 1951–1952, the author brings to life three generations of families, friends, and strangers, who are all profoundly affected by these events, either directly or indirectly.
While Blume employs multiple points of view in the narrative it is teenager Miri Ammerman who has the strongest voice. Against the background of such frightening community tragedy, Miri struggles with the typical trials of adolescence, such as identity, friendship, family and first love. Meanwhile her Uncle Henry makes his name as the journalist who covers the incidents, her best friend, Natalie, is haunted by a plane crash victim, and an elderly man mourning his wife beds down on her grandmother’s couch. The large cast may be off-putting to some readers but I felt the the varied perspectives enriched the narrative.
Blume successfully brings to life the facts surrounding the New Jersey plane crashes, honouring the real life victims of the tragedies. She authentically evokes the era that heralded social change in America, exploring issues such as changing morality and political unrest.
Written with genuine compassion and insight, and with finely drawn characterisation, In the Unlikely Event is an engaging story of life’s ordinary and extraordinary events.