“Surprisingly, people don’t seem to have an appetite for dystopian literature after the end of the world.”
This line from the middle of Lily Braun-Arnold’s debut YA novel, The Last Bookstore on Earth struck me as soon as I read it. Technically, we are not experiencing the end of the world, no matter how much it feels like we are. What we’re living through is more like the end of the world as we know it. But given the decisions made by our current president, an actual apocalypse doesn’t feel that far off.
Braun-Arnold’s book takes place in suburban New Jersey after “The Storm,” an acid rain that wiped out thousands of people and places. The main character is Liz Flannery, a 17-year-old girl who worked in the same independent bookstore that she currently lives in. After losing her family in The Storm, she sought refuge in the bookstore, and fear of leaving the familiar shelves has kept her there for over a year.
The Last Bookstore on Earth is told in real time, but there are chapters that flash back to Liz’s life in the days and months leading up to and immediately after The Storm. We learn she sheltered in the bookstore with her former co-worker and crush Eva. However, Eva had a strong need to leave and see what was left out in the world. While Liz is totally alone most of the time, the store has become a bit of an outpost for people stopping through the area. People come and leave messages or packages for loved ones who might end up passing through the area to varying degrees of success.
When one of her regular passers-through tells her that a second storm is coming, Liz is thrown into a tailspin. She’s not sure the store could possibly withstand a second storm — she never fixed the damage from the first one, and she doesn’t have the resources or strength to do it by herself. But when mysterious stranger Maeve shows up thinking the bookstore is abandoned and seeking shelter, Liz begins to believe that maybe a future is possible for her. That is, if they can survive the second storm together.
I admit, it’s been a long time since I’ve read a dystopian YA. Mainly because adulthood was enough of a horror-show. But as we moved into a second Trump presidency, I found myself looking for something that would mirror the feelings I was having about that. When I discovered that catalyst for the apocalypse in The Last Bookstore on Earth was acid rain, it just felt right. The book was released just as Los Angeles, where I live, began to burn. Just as the rain decimates the New Jersey Liz once knew in the book, parts of the city I call home became burned out shells of the places they once were. In the world of the novel, the California fires would be one of the harbingers of what was coming.
Liz and the other characters don’t have time to pontificate about the ills of climate change and how it has changed their lives. They’re simply too busy trying to survive. They’re living in a desolate wasteland; areas are patrolled by gangs and brigades who are looking to protect the resources they have and steal others. Drinkable water has become practically forgotten. Most people have to ration food and will turn anything they can into a shelter. Liz isn’t at the bookstore because she wants to be; it’s because it’s one of the places that is still mostly standing, the one that doesn’t remind her of the family she lost.
Survivor’s guilt is a huge part of Liz’s story. And how can it not be, when she was the only member of her family to make it through The Storm? The Flannerys were a good example of what I imagine many families will look like as the climate crisis continues to alter our lives. Liz’s father took the obvious warnings seriously, suggesting that the family move to Alaska where things might be a little safer. Her mother is vehemently against the idea, as is Liz’s twin sister Thea. Both her mother and sister write her father off as a conspiracy theorist who is making things worse than they are. For her part, Liz is more on her father’s side, believing that something was coming to change their lives.
It takes a while before we find out what happened to Liz and her family on the day of The Storm, but we see the effects from the very first page. Liz is frozen by the choices she made that night — the anxiety hangs like a lead weight in her chest, coloring every moment of her life in the after. My heart broke for Liz; I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be the only one left. And to spend all of your time trying to figure out why. That’s the one thing she can’t wrap her mind around: Why did she survive when her whole family died? What does it say about her that she was chosen to survive?
That’s what makes Liz’s initial interactions with Maeve so interesting. Everywhere Liz is soft, Maeve is hard. Maeve has had to see and do things to survive that she doesn’t want Liz to know anything about. And for a while, it’s working. The pair are learning how to be around a person again, but also attempting to make surviving the second storm more of a reality. Their feelings for each other grow from tentative to protective and loving, not only because of their situation. You can tell they see the parts of each other no one has ever seen before.
Suddenly, Eva returns, throwing their plan for survival into a total tailspin.
Another thing I really loved in the The Last Bookstore on Earth was the way Braun-Arnold pulled in the stories of random characters Liz encounters. They are hand-scribbled notes to show that world that these people existed, that their lives mattered before The Storm. It makes the story feel a little more alive. When you’re only hearing the thoughts of one character, the little breaks are a nice change of pace.
I don’t want to give away too much; one spoiler could ruin the entire experience. But as the world feels like it’s crumbling around me, it was really nice to see two teen girls fall in love against all odds. And in a bookstore, which may feel like a random choice, but totally works in this story. Bookstores represent a lot to different people — Braun-Arnold captures the magic of your local indie bookstore so well. It’s a place of comfort, of joy…well, it’s a place you feel protected.
