California by Edan Lepucki – – sci-fi

The world has gone to crap. Frida and Cal decide to leave LA to live in the wilderness and try to survive on their own. They find their little piece of the earth to settle. For two years, Frida and Cal live off the land, but eventually they want to find out if there are other people nearby and how they get along in this new world.

Stephen Colbert recommended this book on his show, The Colbert Report, and I decided to read it because the premise intrigued me. I’ve been reading a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction lately, so I figured I would give this one a go.

The book was OK. For me, it wasn’t a page turner. There were some things I didn’t like about the storytelling itself. For example, Frida might be doing something (washing her clothes in the river) and reminiscing about the past for a few pages. Then, there’s a break in her train of thought for one sentence back to the present and then it returns to her reminiscing. Things like that just break me out of the story and felt unnecessary. It made the storytelling a bit uneven.

Also didn’t really like the ending. Guess I needed more.