After the Lights Go Out

I'm a big fan of Lili Wilkinson, both as a person and as a writer (full disclosure: she lives a couple of streets away from me), but I think After the Lights Go Out might be her best novel yet. Lately I've read a few slightly underwhelming kids and YA books, but ATLGO is bloody near perfect. It's solidly constructed, tightly plotted, and smoothly written. It combines drama, romance, fraught family relationships and dystopian catastrophe with hope, kindness and compassion. Even though I'm not a massive fan of apocalyptic stories, I was carried along on the ride on the strength of the characters, and especially the appeal of the capable yet vulnerable protagonist, Pru. The scenario, which Wilkinson admits probably takes some scientific license, feels plausible yet horrifying, and its consequences unfold naturally but not predictably.

Pru's father is a doomsday prepper, and when his dire predictions seem to have come true, his daughters' first reaction is to groan that he will feel so smug. And yet his training proves to have been life-saving... up to a point. It's ironic that when this book was published in 2018, the real global catastrophe was still a couple of years away, and it took a very different form -- a pandemic rather than a massive electronics-frying electromagnetic pulse. And yet the same questions raised by ATLGO were so relevant to all of us -- how to strike a balance between protecting ourselves and helping others; what risks were worth taking; how much could we rely on outside agencies, and how much did we have to take care of ourselves; the ever-tilting seesaw between community and family and self-interest.

After the Lights Go Out is a fantastic read and it's restored my faith in young adult fiction! I note it was shortlisted for plenty of awards but annoyingly didn't actually win any. Grr.