In the Unlikely Event

Title: In the Unlikely Event
Author: Judy Blume, narrated by Kathleen McInerney
Published: June 2, 2015 by Random House Audio
Length: 14 hours 4 minutes
Source: Publisher at BEA
Rating: 4/5
Goodreads

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 place—Nat King Cole singing “Unforgettable,” 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 Blume’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.

My review:

I'm embarrassed to admit that this is my first Judy Blume book. I should have read Are You There God since that was published when I was a pre-teen, but somehow I didn't. Most of her later works I was out of the targeted age range. I think my girls may have read one or two of her books, but they were reading on their own by that point, so I did not experience them. I'm only mentioning this because I went into this book blind, with no expectations of the author's previous works. I've read a few reviews where this expectation from reading the children's books has translated into a bit of a letdown with this adult novel. I really liked the book, although I did have a few issues with the writing style (maybe a bit simplistic in parts for an adult novel), and SO SO many characters. Keep in mind that I listened to this on audio, so there was no going back to figure out all the characters that are thrown out in the first quarter of the book. I found that as I kept going and the characters repeated in the story, it all came together, but it is a bit troublesome at first. So apart from that, I loved the character of Miri, she was wonderfully portrayed (not surprising as she is around the age of Blume's former characters). The story about the plane crashes was compelling and very factual. Ms. Blume lived through them in her hometown so there are interesting anecdotes from the local paper (real articles as well as the fictionalized ones written by Miri's uncle). Why have we never heard of these in history? I even asked my mother-in-law who lived in NYC at the time, and she doesn't remember it. I enjoyed many of the side stories, particularly those of Christina and Henry.

I listened to this on audio, and I thought the narrator did a good job, especially with the huge numbers of characters she was dealing with voicing.

A book worth picking up if you like fictionalized accounts of historical events, with lots of intermingling side stories. Just go with the flow at the beginning and the characters will all fall into place.