Full Reviews
“The TV show Portlandia’s got nothing on this smart portrayal of post-apocalyptic Portland as the place to be after the series civilization-destroying earthquakes, volcanoes, plagues, starvation, etc that comprised the Apocalypse. And dystopia is, as might be expected, a relentless fact of life. In Anne Mendel’s hands, it is also a relentless source of humor and wisdom. Ettiquette for an Apocalypse is as funny a look at hell as anyone can imagine. Think Cormac McCarthy meets Christopher Moore.
The characters are true and the darkness is rich. And as for the day to day struggles of rearing a teenager, maintaing a marriage, putting dinner on the table, dealing with a live-in aging parent — some things, it appears, don’t change.”
Joanna Rose, author of “Little Miss Strange”
Etiquette –”Ah … finally a ‘girlie’ apocalypse book”, I thought when I read the title of the book by Anne Mendel – ‘Etiquette for an Apocalypse’. It definitely piqued my curiosity as to how etiquette could have anything remotely to do with an apocalyptic world where images of chaos, civil unrest, fighting, looting and hardship are usually the first things that are conjured-up in our minds.
The book is a fictional journey into a world turned upside down and yet somehow seems to function in a dysfunctional-functional sort of way for the main character, Sophie; who remains a mother, sister, wife and daughter post-apocalypse.
Sophie’s apocalypse began way before the actual event, in a life where she could never quite seem to conform to that ‘perfect daughter’ image her mother, Lulu, “a well-to-doer” had hoped for. As fate would have it, together they are thrust into a post-apocalyptic world to live and survive – with one another and the world outside their penthouse window, along with Sophie’s husband, Bertrand a doctor; but not one Lulu would have picked, her daughter Sasha; a typical defiant 13 year old (much like her mother Sophie) and, brother Mitchell, a hands-offish nerdy former theory professor at MIT.
The year is 2020. With no electrical power, a lack of food and violence on the streets, neighbors of the building where Sophie and her family live, are brought together out of necessity, and for some; a social need, creating a network of communal talents that work in tandem to sustain them all. It’s a colorful group (remember, we can pick our neighborhood but not our neighbors), and one I’m sure was added by the author to remind us it’s not always about us.
Maybe out of fear, stubbornness or protection of her family, Sophie finds herself tapping into her entrepreneurial skills to sell OTC-type drugs at an open air makeshift “market”, contrived by her laboratory-rat brother Mitchell in his lab using equipment salvaged from the local high school; investigating a serial killer along-side her doctor-husband Bertrand; and, finding herself in a turf war defending all she believes in – family.
Lulu, Sophie’s mother, always the proper lady and proprietor of the lavish penthouse that has now become the family’s gilded refuge, clings to her designer clothes oblivious, in her delusional world, that severe weight loss has caused them to hang like a cheap suit, made me wonder – if only for a moment – if we all wouldn’t do the same – refusing to believe or give into the notion that ‘our things’ no longer matter. There is no rich or poor – just people. Being self-reliant, the book also made me question myself. “Would I do that” or “Why didn’t they do this?” For instance, reading that everyone cut their hair close to their head, sent chills down my spine and conjured up visions of me and the dreadful “pixie” haircut my mother gave me as a child. This, thought also opened my eyes to the real possibility of “oh yeah lice” putting me on the road to researching to find a remedy before “the poo ever hit the fan.
For some this book will be pure fiction – saying, this could never happen and read it purely for entertainment. For others, like me, we know it can and quite possibly will happen at some point in the future. For this reason, I recommend the book, if for nothing more than to understand our vulnerabilities and begin to question ourselves as to how prepared we really are. Most everything that could happen in a post-apocalyptic world happens in this book. It’s not all doom and gloom though there is laughter, romance, and friendship – peppered with the obligatory conflict, struggle and yes death.
At the very end of the book, the author asks a few questions that I hope will make you think.
“If the world was coming to an end in minutes – who would you call?
Why Wait?
And, noooo the answer is not ‘Ghost Busters’!
Just Sayin’
–SurvivorJane.com (Disaster Survival Preparedness for Women)
“Alternately witty and harrowing, Anne Mendel’s brilliantly audacious novel, set in Portland in the near future, imagines the advice Miss Manners tragically left out. How should people behave after the earthquakes, volcanoes, and sun blot? Enter Sophie, wife, mother, daughter, sister and community organizer whose life, like everyones, is complicated by plagues, violence, starvation and death. It’s longer a picnic in Washington Park. Can Sophia survive to figure out how to create a new normal?
No one knows Portland, Oregon, its people and places better than Mendel. For fans of this magnificent, quirky city, “Etiquette For An Apocalypse” is a must read. Compulsively readable, heartbreaking, suspenseful, and ultimately triumphant, with characters you will recognize from that trendy restaurant on NW 23rd to strolls through the Saturday Market.
On the next dark and stormy night snuggle up with the book, a glass of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir and a chocolate frosted Voodoo donut, for tomorrow you dine on radishes and kale.”
Gloria Russakov, Best Selling Author of “Eating Out in Oregon”
“I have never laughed so hard reading a book before…even though the topic can be, at times,depressing and sad. I gave this book five stars.”
Heidi Wimmer bookhimdanno.blogspot.com
Mendel has taken a subject normally relegated to paranormal romance and science fiction and made it far more realistic. Her post-apocalyptic world is not filled with zombies and other supernatural atrocities. She creates a very believable situation and her characters are easy to identify with. Sophie’s drug’s are not recreational. Her brother makes, and she sells, what today would be over the counter drugs for medical ailments. Her husband still slaves away as a doctor at the local hospital even though it no longer pays and his job is far more challenging in a time when electricity, most drugs and other medical necessities are impossible to find but the number of dying patients has greatly increased. Their daughter is a typical 13 year-old in a very atypical time. Being a teenager is, in many ways, the same as before the apocalypse – rebellion against the parents, anxiety over boys, you know the usual – with the added problems of a lack of food, no organized schools and rampant street violence. Sophie’s mother’s grasp on reality seems weak most of the time and yet she can be very astute. She has a way of seeing the really important parts of a problem. She, ever the Jewish mother, is the one who has instilled Sophie’s good etiquette and still considers it very important despite, or perhaps because of, the horrible conditions the family lives in.
Sophie’s investigation into the dumping of murdered prostitutes leads her to an important role in a turf war. Being a mom and budding entrepreneur has prepared her well to be a para-militaristic leader.
Working together reignites a long dormant flame between Sophie and her husband that is touching and exciting.
Sophie is sarcastic and irreverent. I laughed put loud numerous times and marked several pages. This book is a very entertaining read and who knows, it might just come in handy if we find ourselves in similar circumstances!
Jeanne Stone-Hunter for My Book Addiction
The world Post-Apocalypse 2023 is described through the eyes, ears and feelings of Sophie Cohen in Anne Mendel’s Etiquette for an Apocalypse. Sophie writes in first person, present tense about the world around her after the Yellowstone Caldera blows in the year 2020.
This paperback book has a charming, almost “Supertramp” feel to it’s jacket cover of a thin, unadorned woman reading the same novel while having a cup of tea in the middle of a desert with a bleak brown sky and a dog beside her. The back of the jacket lists two reviews and one book description. It is two hundred and seventy-seven pages, not including the praises, title pages and acknowledgements. Each chapter beginning has an apropos quote at the top of the page. No grammatical or typographical errors were noticed. The book has a plethora of profanities, sexual content and racial slurs so is not recommended for pre-teen age and under.
Mendel’s main character is in her forties and trying to keep her husband, daughter, mother, condo friends and herself simply alive after world-wide devastations. The storyline is initially convincing, relating to all aspects of trying to live after an apocalypse. It has dark humor, sadness, and relationship struggles in it. Several sentences are reread to appreciate and enjoy the wording, sarcasm or nuances.
From living by hunting, gathering, trading and protecting the condo where the survivalists live, the story evolves into a murder-mystery of a serial killer who victimizes prostitutes. Before the case is solved, there are turf-wars, jockeying of who will be king in the area and justification of dealing with “the bad guys.”
The first third of the book is a page turner, keeping the reader interested in different avenues to survive, establishing each character and visualizing the revamped, post-apocalyptic Portland, Oregon area. The author tells it from the heart and perspective of Sophie’s mind, be it by her wit, sexual desire for her husband or hurt for a disconnected relationship with her demented mother, preteen daughter or savant brother. The second third of the book gets a little far-fetched with psychics, covens and the occult, strange King Arthur characters and an unrealistic rescue of Sophie’s newly-discovered sister. The final third redeems some of the interest but gets a bit muddled down in solving the war between two groups who want ultimate territorial control.
I enjoyed reading the dark humor, the character building given through the writer’s eyes and the creativity of dealing with survival after a world-wide devastation. However, I was disappointed on the amount of profanity and sexed-obsessed thinking. I also do not fully understand the final page of one sentence – as perhaps maintaining relationships was the key reason for writing the book.
Conny Crisalli of Bookpleasures.com
Apocalyptic doom has inspired some of the world’s greatest art, from Michelangelo’s shiveringly sublime Sistine Chapel fresco The Last Judgment, to Samuel Beckett’s enigmatic, austere Waiting for Godot, and even kitchy, catchy classics like the 1980s rock band REM’s song “It’s the End of the World as We Know it” or Mel Gibson’s The Road Warrior. There’s something about possible total annihilation that seems to really inspire some artists.
Much of the aesthetic response in these game-over scenarios ping-pongs between grim acceptance and warlike defiance. But in Anne Mendel’s gripping new novel, Etiquette for an Apocalypse, the response to the end of days is more feisty than funereal. In this darkly compelling work, Mendel makes us understand that what we’ll miss most when the hour is bleakest are the small, daily gifts: a schmeer of Nutella, the gentle graze of squeezeable Charmin, kibble for the kitty.
Mendel has written a wonderfully tart book, highly original in its post-apocalyptic hierarchy, cinematic in its grimy, goofy characters and harrowing enough to appeal to the die hard dystopian fiction fan. The heroine of the book, Sophie Cohen, is a mother, daughter, and wife – at least those used to be apt descriptors. In her new incarnation, after a series of natural cataclysms destroys the infrastructure – physical and social – of her region of the United States, she is defined more by her survival instincts (which are, to say the least, considerable). But what makes her such an endearing guide to the hellish post-normal-world is how she refuses to capitulate to the mental torment her daily life has become. She fiercely clings to a redemptive vision, and refuses to obliterate her identity as mother, daughter, and wife, and in the back of her mind – as she’s slithering through sewer pipes on the run from gun-toting vigilantes or hiding bombs in her underwear and facing down assassins – she both tortures and soothes her wounded psyche by thinking of the grudging smile of her teenaged daughter, or the unexpected spark of her taciturn husband’s touch. These moments of unexpected visitation from her previous happy and settled life are as energizing as they are enervating.
The plot of the book involves Sophie’s travails as she and her family – and a network of confederates whose lives were all severely upended by the tumult of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, a general breakdown in law and order, looting, and a Lord-of-the-Flies re-ordering of society – struggle to fight malnutrition, disease, rape, murder, and mutiny. Mendel’s writing is pitch perfect for her situation, the dialogue grimly realistic. Sophie can wax rhapsodic about the long-lost glories of clean linen, or swear like a biker when facing down a threatening marauder. To my ear, both the book’s profundities, and its profanities, rang true.
Etiquette for an Apocalypse is a starkly realized and sure-handed original work of fiction, highly entertaining and highly recommended. Though it might not, like Michelangelo’s seminal work, leave you mumbling incantations to a higher power, it will most certainly leave you craving several large spoonfuls of Nutella.
James Broderick Ph.D, Bookpleasures.com
This book is marketed as dark comedy, and it’s perfectly on the mark; I was laughing out loud from the top of page two. I think the comedy was probably my favorite thing about this book, in fact- because the horrifying plausibility of the plot would be a little much to handle without the humor.
The year is 2020, and after a string of natural disasters, society has been broken down its most simple form, with people doing whatever is necessary to survive. Our heroine, Sophie Cohen, was so very easy for me to identify with; her most defining characteristic in her post-apocalyptic world is her well-rounded toolbox of mommy skills. She is responsible for organizing a small community in her building, and therefore the survival of many of those community members. She is recruited to help with a major political event, mostly because she knows how to positively influence and bring out the best in others (and also because she is surprisingly resourceful, making do when the luxuries of modern living are not available.) She is fiercely protective of all of the members of her family, even when they’re behaving in ways that make it hard to like them. She applies the skills of a modern-day successful mother like she might have chosen to live in her crappy, beaten-to-hell world. She is an inspiration to women everywhere who are feeling overwhelmed, overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated. And who sometimes develop food issues.
Fair warning: this book contains objectionable language and adult content. It’s an end-of-the-world setting, so people’s behavior is probably much more coarse than it would be in our everyday lives. If you’re not in a mental space to be okay with something that is rough around the edges, this may not be a good read for you. If you don’t mind those things, though, and you could use a good laugh or two, as well as a perspective adjustment, I encourage you to give this one a try.
Paula, The Reading Lark