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Total Oblivion, More or Less

by Alan DeNiro (Goodreads Author)

3.08 of 5 stars 3.08 · rating details · 217 ratings · 71 reviews

“I remember the first time I began to understand that things might not be the same again.”

What’s a girl to do when her world is invaded by warriors from the ancient world? That’s the problem faced by sixteen-year-old Macy, who sees her quiet, normal life in suburban Minnesota turned upside down when things that should never be possible begin to transform the landscape all...more

Paperback, 320 pages

Published November 24th 2009 by Spectra (first published October 30th 2009)

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Best Adult Fiction for Young Adults

113th out of 149 books — 34 voters

Best Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

408th out of 565 books — 1,399 voters

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Nov 27, 2009 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Brad, D-Pow, jo, Ceridwen, Abigail(?)

Some strange synchronicity.... Plotting out a survey of World Literature I was to teach I began seeking some end-of-semester new addition, a vaguely-formed notion that it'd be fun/useful to move away from the national frame, to think about literature in the era of globalization using science fictions. I'd had great success with Amitav Ghosh's sneakily-satirical counter-colonization sci-fi/conspiracy-thriller mash-up The Calcutta Chromosome, so what else might be out there? I came upon this sharp ...more Some strange synchronicity.... Plotting out a survey of World Literature I was to teach I began seeking some end-of-semester new addition, a vaguely-formed notion that it'd be fun/useful to move away from the national frame, to think about literature in the era of globalization using science fictions. I'd had great success with Amitav Ghosh's sneakily-satirical counter-colonization sci-fi/conspiracy-thriller mash-up The Calcutta Chromosome, so what else might be out there? I came upon this sharp little blog about the (ir)relevance of science fiction to Africa, and saw that its author had written two very successful sci-fi/fantasy young-adult novels set in West Africa; the first, in fact, had won the Wole Soyinka prize for literature in Africa. (I'm not sure whether it's more surprising that a young-adult novel got that nod or that a sci-fi novel got that nod.) Her second, The Shadow Speaker , was about a young girl with a complex family life on a quest in a world suddenly stricken by the Great Change--portals/shifting boundaries set up with other worlds, technology breaking down or (more surprisingly) mutating into strange new forms, strange magic now informing (or reforming) and disrupting reality. Sounds great--I ordered it, stuck it on the syllabus for late November.

Cue Theremin. Every September my in-laws give me my favorite gift (don't tell my parents), a sizable certificate to Amazon. I sit down to compile a list of forthcoming options that intrigue--I use their dough to find stuff I don't really know, that seems worth a gamble (and it's not *real* money, right?). On the list this year was Alan DeNiro, whose short fictions had gotten some raves for their slipstream beats and dark-comic energy; his first novel, Total Oblivion, More or Less, dealt with a young girl with a complex family life on a journey in a world suddenly stricken by great changes--masses of barbarians invading St. Paul, armies (from the past?) raiding and ravaging the country, portals/shifting boundaries set up with other worlds, technology breaking down or (more surprisingly) mutating into strange new forms, strange magic now informing (or reforming--let's not talk about the dog) and disrupting reality. Sounds great--I ordered it, to be shipped upon release in late November.

I was half-done with Okorafor's novel when DeNiro's arrived. To read them simultaneously made my eyes cross, seeing Ejii and Macy and their experiences and the novels' world(s)-building as intertwined, despite the mere happenstance of these circumstances.

Both novels are worth your time, and I'd even recommend the extra-dimensionality by seeing them in strange alignment. There's something worth exploring in the eruption of this world-shifting genre at this particular moment in time -- we're certainly untangling some of the useful allegorical resonances in my class focus on globalization: the separate worlds we used to (imagine we) live/d in now suddenly, sometimes confoundingly blurry. New tech magic constantly shifting our lives. But these books both succeed by NOT falling into ye olde allegorical equations, avoiding the neat literary game of symbolic social commentary. They both work as adventures, as delightful high-wire acts of imagination--what if the duststorm was sentient, a raging soul? What if the refugees fleeing from the barbarians down the Mississippi were saved by a submarine? Each author raids her or his estimable subconscious stores to tease out a range of allusions and cross-cultural/-generic riffs and outright inventions -- the books kept surprising me page by page with plot twists that then got (for the most part) stitched right into the fabric of the emergent story.

Okorafor's novel is pitched at a younger readership, but that seems less constraint on imaginative possibility than a tighter set of rules for the prose--she writes cleanly, clearly, and only occasionally did this not-so-young adult reader feel simplistically. DeNiro writes with more surrealist fizz, a dark comic undertone that often delighted me ('though occasionally undercutting my investment in the world being built--when the eccentricity of the novel's reality seemed like a writerly joke rather than an existential one).

I will read more by both of these authors.(less)

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Jan 07, 2010 Daniel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-fiction, fantasy

I had mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I appreciate the absurdity of DeNiro's imagined post-apocalyptic United States, and he takes a big risk by refusing to explain any of it. That makes sense as the characters in the novel would have no opportunity to even begin to understand what was happening to their world beyond the visible results.

This is ultimately a story of a family that is being torn apart, and of a teenage girl's attempt to save her brother, despite how he has slight...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Doug rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

DeNiro's first novel (following a well-received string of short stories) presents a transformed near-future America: the nation is beset by anachronistic invaders, ravaged by a mysterious plague, and technology stops working. DeNiro pulls off the neat trick of making his surreal world feel internally consistent, largely because it's grounded by the narrative voice of Macy, a young woman who finds herself on a river journey through this newly even stranger country. The matter-of-factness of her v...more DeNiro's first novel (following a well-received string of short stories) presents a transformed near-future America: the nation is beset by anachronistic invaders, ravaged by a mysterious plague, and technology stops working. DeNiro pulls off the neat trick of making his surreal world feel internally consistent, largely because it's grounded by the narrative voice of Macy, a young woman who finds herself on a river journey through this newly even stranger country. The matter-of-factness of her voice addresses the credibility gap, but it's not without music:

I looked at Iowa. Moss-covered, windowless pickup trucks were marooned on the highway running alongside the river. A skinned, headless deer hung from a tree in a flooded backyard, next to a swing set. A trio of hide tents were set up on the flat roof of a strip mall's bait shop. A small, skinny dog, smothered in mud, foraged along the banks.

and

. . .then there'd be that laugh of my mother's, clear and clumsy, like a woman tripping over a bell that someone left on a cathedral floor by accident,

Total Oblivion, More or Less is divided into two major sections, and while I liked the book as a whole, I loved the first, and thought it was more successful than the second. The first half is (more or less, mostly) picaresque. Its catalog of strangeness and episodic encounters wraps up just as it's beginning to feel a touch repetitive. Huck Finn's shadow is so long it's virtually impossible for a satiric book with a river boat not to call Twain to mind at least a bit; DeNiro's ordinary folk confronted with the extraordinary also reminded me of George Saunders, and a smidge (despite a world or stylistic and thematic differences) of Rachel Pollack's Unquenchable Fire.

In the second half, Macy and her family become increasingly embroiled in emerging political conflicts, and one of the characters is gradually revealed to be a sort of archetype. The novel also begins to suggest disappointingly straightforward metaphorical interpretations for the plague and the invaders. There are elements that evoke -- deliberately, I'm inclined to think -- Swift, Kafka, and Mervyn Peake; I thought at least one of these bordered on the gimmicky.

I also suspect it was a difficult book to decide how to end. DeNiro opts for small "r" naturalistic resolution over big "R" epic fantasy-style resolution -- the right choice, but since DeNiro still has a lot of balls in play when the curtain comes down, it feels a bit abrupt. Overall, though, it's a strong debut and certainly leaves me eager for more from DeNiro.
(less)

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May 04, 2010 Sarah Nicolas rated it 3 of 5 stars

In deciding on my rating of this one, I was torn between rating it in terms of how much I liked it and rating it in terms of how good the book is - so I opted for somewhere in the middle. Though I (academically) know that DeNiro is very talented, the book is well-crafted, and every choice he makes seems to be well-thought out, it's just not my cup of tea.

Much of the book felt like an acid trip (or what has been explained to me as an acid trip - cuz I wouldn't know what that was like. That stuff...more

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Jan 16, 2011 Julie Johnson rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a very strange book but I mean that it the best way possible. I was in awe at the author's creative power. So much of what happens in this post-apocalyptic world is bizarre, and yet the author manages to keep it grounded in reality, so that you actually believe these surreal events could actually take place.

In the midst of all this strangeness, a family tries to survive. The different characters--and their dynamics--are very well realized. The 16 year old protagonist--and main narrator-...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Craig Leimkuehler added it

This is a remarkable book. Remarkable by the fact that it was published at all. The basic premise of the book is about 16 year old Macy and her family's struggles in some sort of weird end-of-the-world future that defies discription or any sense of logic. Sadly Mr. Deniro takes a promising idea and kills it ike a bug under foot. I was hoping for something more along the lines of Terry Brooks "Running with the Demon".

I think it would much more interesting/entertaining to learn what methods did Al...more

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Jun 04, 2010 Ab rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: post-apocalyptic-futuristic

An altogether interesting read. I'm having a hard time pinning down my feelings about it as a whole, though. I read the book with the assumption that absurdism played a pretty big part in this post-apocalyptic United States, and I think it greatly helped. I mean, so much of it is absurdist, but not all in a bad way. Sometimes it seemed like the tossing-in of wacky stuff might have taken away from the experience of the book as a cohesive story, but other times, it seemed to fit, like seeing giraf...more An altogether interesting read. I'm having a hard time pinning down my feelings about it as a whole, though. I read the book with the assumption that absurdism played a pretty big part in this post-apocalyptic United States, and I think it greatly helped. I mean, so much of it is absurdist, but not all in a bad way. Sometimes it seemed like the tossing-in of wacky stuff might have taken away from the experience of the book as a cohesive story, but other times, it seemed to fit, like seeing giraffes wandering about with empty saddles after a battle won by the Empire was just how it had to be. I think the cover of this edition fits the book perfectly, in the whole mashing together of all kinds of crazy, and perhaps it was all a dog's dream.

I experienced this book as a Thomas Pynchon work (I've only read "Crying of Lot 49," so, accessible, but batshit crazy) mixed with a really warped kind of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain tossed in. The story centers around the Midwest and traveling up and down the Mississippi River on small river boats, trying to avoid capture by Scythians or Empire soldiers, etc. Both of these aspects felt like good things, I might add. I'm aware that one can read into that as being a criticism, but it felt alright.

Another interesting aspect of the story was the complete lack of explanation for ANYTHING that was happening -- who are the Scythians? Where did they come from? Who is the Empire? What's the deal with this wasp plague? Why does everyone just go with this massive change as if nothing was happening? How does a city become built with 60-story skyscrapers from castle-stone with a system of draw-bridges linking buildings, in less than 6 months? What?!? I actually kind of liked this lack of explanation -- the author obviously had some guts to go at this in this way.

My one complaint ... St. Louis, Missouri should just never be referred to as "Lou". Uggh. I cringed every time I read this as a reference to St. Louis. It seriously felt like an uncool parent trying to use the kids' slang, but totally screwing it up because "Lou" isn't something anyone from St. Louis would say. Just had to say it, being from St. Louis, it's not "Lou", "The Lou", "Louie", "St. Louie" (like in the movie, NO). Thatisall.

Thanks, Mr. DeNiro, for coming into Left Bank Books and giving me a copy to read ... a St. Louis post-apocalyptic book, who'd have thought?!(less)

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Apr 05, 2010 Daniel Withrow rated it 1 of 5 stars

I read this book and Devil's Alphabet back to back, and the latter drove the former's faults into stark relief. Both books deal with a cataclysm that upends civilization in some way. Where the characters in Devil's Alphabet handle the cataclysm with plausible, complex, and imminently readable reactions, the characters in Total Oblivion respond cartoonishly, annoyingly, boringly. It's as if the author has never met a human being before and doesn't have any idea what they're like.

At the same time,...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Krysten rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: dared-not-finish, apocalypse-dystopia

I got far enough in this book that if I'd read for another 20-30 minutes, I could have finished. At the last moment, though, I decided I really didn't care.

This book was surreal, which I don't have a problem with. My problem was that everything was impossible to contextualize. Nothing was explained, it was just, bam, here's this new reality. I was hoping for an apocalypse and I got what essentially seemed like a different dimension or something. Geography was different and dogs were talking and...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Jeff rated it 2 of 5 stars

This just didn’t work for me. I like weirdness and I don’t need everything to be explained, but I do require at least a thread of believability and that was lacking here. I also need an invented world (and that’s really what this is) to follow some internal rules, which seemed to be lacking as well. There was such an all-over-the-place quality to this story that the super-tidy ending seemed jarring and completely out of place. That said, I thought the epilogue was really nicely written and I enj...more

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Jun 27, 2010 David rated it 2 of 5 stars

I also just finished Total Oblivion, More or Less, and it read like a Huckleberry Finn as narrated by Alice Liddel. The story is descent into a strange post-apocalyptic world where much civilization has broken down and science no longer works (imagine if Lamplighter's Aerie Ones got freed from their geis to behave in a predictable manner...), and it mostly works. One element of Deniro's prose style is his lack of direct quotations from characters even in sections of dialogue - this was pretty ja...more

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Mar 29, 2010 Hind rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: angsty-teen-fiction, vampires-and-other-creepies

Weird plot, but I got into it at the end. In a world where the Scythians have returned, the plague is back, a talking dog roams the streets, and the Mississippi River has moved - what's a girl to do? No internet, no cable, no nothing of our contemporary lives..sso what matters? Family matters. And truth and justice. But mostly, family.

You don't need to know ancient European history, but would probably be helpful. Drug use and swearing make me hesiatate to recommend it to younger teens, but I'm...more

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Nov 30, 2009 Rosalia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: dystopias, young-adult, 2009

This book is not something I would typically read, but it was interesting, well written and had a great cover. Macy's junior year of high school, the world falls apart; technology stops working, ancient invaders come and the world seems to be reshaping itself. Macy's family tries to stay together and work toward some kind of future, but in actuality it is falling apart. The novel chronicles their times with a focus on Macy in particular. Why the world fell apart is never explained, but the strug...more

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Oct 29, 2010 Dodie rated it 3 of 5 stars

If you can't buy into the absurd premise, you may not be able to find the real story being told by DeNiro of a middle-class Minnesota family turned post-apocalyptic nomads on the Mississippi. I had to read this in chunks, or it just got to be too much - plague carrying wasps, war-zone tourism, McDonald's and hand-cranked elevators - see what I mean? But I kept going, guessing all the way which way DeNiro would take me next. The writing is terrific and there are many laugh out loud moments in the...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Zach rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not so great at keeping this site updated. In fact, I'm wretched at it.

The postmodern blurring of societies displaced in time and space were the best part of this bad boy. Or the freshwater whales. It's a fine blend of whimsy and post-apocalyptic dread that works better when its focus is on vignettes and disorienting imagery. The POV characters had a lot of believable details, but I rarely felt invited into their disintegration.

Hey! The author has an account here. This is my roommate's new f...more

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May 08, 2010 Edward Chusid rated it 3 of 5 stars

This fictional work deals with the United States and a post-apocalyptic period, however it also deals with the successor to the United States, a patchwork of states that are a blend of the modern and the past in one. Although the author never actually outlines what causes the change in the world it appears to be a leak of influences of the past into the modern age. The overall story though focuses on the trials of a nuclear family in this age - although at points the book seems to drag overall a...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Jennifer rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-books

This post apocalyptic coming of age story should have been right up my alley, but the surreal landscape and lack of ANY coherent explanation of the geopolitical setting left me cold and annoyed. There's everything from submarines that shoot ceramic jars and plague wasps to slave drivers and dogs that absorb human fetuses and as a result learn to talk. AND NONE OF IT IS EXPLAINED. Maybe it was the author's intention to keep readers as off-kilter and uncomfortable as Macy, the 16-year-old narrator...more

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Feb 18, 2010 Andrew Neal rated it 3 of 5 stars

I pushed through the first two-thirds of this one because it was such an easy read. I really enjoyed the last third. It's a postapocalyptic, humorously surreal thing, and I'm better at processing literal storylines rather than surrealism, or I'd have liked it more overall.

I will not mention the event in the book which turned me around, because it was so unexpected that you should read it for yourself if you're interested.

I checked it out from the library because it has awesome cover design; I'd...more

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May 23, 2013 Pmwolohan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary, sf, in, 2009

Originally posed on my review blog, Stomping on Yeti at http://yetistomper.blogspot.com/2010/... Words or Less: Depicting the ancient past�s invasion of the American present, DeNiro�s debut novel echoes the feeling of his surreal shorter fiction: imaginative and unpredictable but at times uneven.[return][return]Rating: 3/5 stars[return][return]The Good: When it works, the base concept is interesting, thought-provoking, and even hilarious at times; The somewhat chaotic plot comes back together in...more Originally posed on my review blog, Stomping on Yeti at http://yetistomper.blogspot.com/2010/... Words or Less: Depicting the ancient past�s invasion of the American present, DeNiro�s debut novel echoes the feeling of his surreal shorter fiction: imaginative and unpredictable but at times uneven.[return][return]Rating: 3/5 stars[return][return]The Good: When it works, the base concept is interesting, thought-provoking, and even hilarious at times; The somewhat chaotic plot comes back together in unexpected ways toward the end of the novel; [return][return]The Bad: Lack of internal world logic may bug the rationale types; Had trouble attaching myself to the protagonist; Somewhat random asides disrupt the main plot[return][return]When I did some research for my interview with Alan DeNiro last year, I read his short fiction collection Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. Each story evoked a different emotion from me. Some stories I loved, others fell completely flat. The strangest part was that it wasn�t a gradual progression. I would be amazed by the sixth story, struggle to finish the seventh, and then devour the eighth. There was no denying that all of it was imaginative and all of it felt like it was really trying to say something worth saying. The simple truth was that for me, some of it worked and some of it didn�t. As I turned the pages of Total Oblivion, More or Less, I realized that it was happening again.[return][return]The main thread of the book concerns Macy Palmer, Minnesotan and her mildly dysfunctional family. They aren�t extremely dysfunctional just the average American blend of middle-child syndrome, oversheltered youths, and other mild maladies. The Palmers travel down the Mississippi seeking safer shores after an unexpected invasion. Not an invasion of Canadians or Russians, mind you, an invasion from the past. Things begin to happen without reason. Barbarians begin to invade and pillage. Ancient imperial armies appear to combat the barbarians but claim the land as their own. Diseases with symbolic symptoms spread and kill and spread some more. Technology stops working. The world rapidly becomes a weird, weird place. Naturally, Macy�s dad decide Minnesota isn�t safe and decides to move his wife, two daughters, and Napoleonic son to St. Louis to take a teaching job and escape the rapidly deteriorating conditions. And that�s just the setup. There are wooden submarines, talking dogs, stone skyscrapers, and even a giraffe or two. [return][return]To be fair, this wasn�t the best book for me. I think very rationally and I get easily hung up on inconsistencies. When the world stops obeying the laws of time, physics, and internal logic, it�s only a matter of time before I have a hard time accepting things. But to DeNiro�s credit, he can write some extremely imaginative sequences and make them work. Despite my natural inclinations, when the book was good it was great. By pushing this typical American family through a series of obstacles so strange it would make Double Dare do a double take, DeNiro seems to be making some statements about the state of American family and culture. Ranging from subtle irony to outright satire (as an example, the barbarians keep McDonald�s open for the fast food), there are a number of layers to this work and I have no doubt that you could delve deeper and pull out connections that you missed on your first read through. [return][return]But for every segment that really hooked me early on, there seemed to be another that just didn�t fit. At times, the plot seemed to stagnate as DeNiro focused on developing the principal characters in his story. Unfortunately, none of these characters are especially sympathetic or interesting until late in the novel. They aren�t shallow; they just don�t feel worth reading about. It was simply too easy to set the book down and walk away. [return][return]Not helping was the structure of the story itself. In between each of the chapters, DeNiro places an aside that exposes a little piece of his larger, illogical world. Each aside was different in content and tone, ranging from health advice from imperial doctors and urban legends to random correspondence and Palmer family backstory. Some were certainly interesting but others fell short of that mark and in a book that was so chaotic already, they just provided further distraction. [return][return]Ultimately, the narrative becomes more focused on Macy herself. When this happens she stops serving as a lens through which her family is overanalyzed and instead takes on a more active role in the book. This marks a turning point in the novel at which a plot begins to emerge out of the absurdity and the wildly inconsistent scenes trend toward a satisfying conclusion. Even some (but not all) of the offputting asides were brought into cohesion with the larger story. I still don�t think they benefited the novel but DeNiro at least managed to redeem their prior inclusion.[return][return]In the end, despite my distaste for portions of the book, I felt like its strengths outweighed its flaws. Even the parts that I didn�t enjoy seemed overly ambitious rather than intrinsically flawed. I understood what he was trying to do and while it didn�t work for me, I could respect it from a more literary perspective. There is no denying that DeNiro has one of the most imaginative and unique voices in the genre today. If he can learn to pair his unpredictable creativity with a tighter story, the resulting book should be something special. Total Oblivion, More or Less is less than a total success but there is clearly enough potential to expect big things from DeNiro�s future efforts.(less)

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May 27, 2011 Ⓛeah ✿εїз✾ rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 52-books-in-52-weeks

So good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...more

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May 11, 2011 Debbie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebook, young-adult, fantasy, post-apocalyptic, 2011

This would have just been a two-star book but the last half of the book really took off running. It is a post-apocalyptic world where modern electrical devices stop working, invaders on horseback wielding swords and axes are invading South, the Empire is fighting North, and large corporations have embraced the new world order by selling their workforce as slave labor. Macy and her family find themselves in the middle of this, and end up traveling south on the Mississippi to try and find a new li...more

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Jan 01, 2011 Nell_RVA rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked this book up at the library entirely because the cover art caught my eye and the synopsis was intriguing. A few folks said they didn't like not having everything explained. I like the fact that not much about the "apocalypse" was fully understood. We only know what Macy knows. No phones, no TV, no internet... It's absurdist post-apocalyptic coming of age fun that got better the more I read. If you don't like that type of book, don't bother. If you'd like a little Judy Bloom meets Dougla...more

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Feb 16, 2010 TheSaint rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: post-apocto, adult

I really wanted to like this book. But as it turns out, DeNiro's post-apocolyptic vision and mine just don't jibe.
I could have used a hair more exposition, so I could kind of tell where the characters had been and how they might navigate their futures. But what I got was a feeling that I was along for their ride. They had no idea what had happened to the world and neither did I. So I guess that was a good literary exercise, even though it made me uncomfortable.
Still, I could have appreciated th...more

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Jan 19, 2011 Kyrie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, sci-fi

A post-apocalyptic trip down the Mississippi. I don't think I would have enjoyed this book if it hadn't taken place along a river in places I know fairly well.
Warriors from past civilizations have invaded the modern world and taken it over. Macy and her family become refugees and then she's parted from her family while she tries to save her brother from a death sentence. It's weird and probably weirder if you have no clue where they are.

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Feb 25, 2013 Emmy Jackson rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was a strange one. I didn't ever get a sense of *enjoying* it per se, though I was curious as to how things would turn out. So I felt like I was drawn along by this curious journey through a warped world, but I never felt like I was a *part* of the world, I didn't fall into the story. Does that make sense? So it was unique, and it was memorable, but I also never got that delightful, "this is awesome!" feeling from it.

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Jun 21, 2010 May FLower rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't know how it's possible. But this was both very interesting and kinda boring to read. Things got so nonsensical that I kind of stopped caring, but I also wanted to know what happened. Of course, in the end, it turns out I didn't care too much. If you're into strangeness for strangeness' sake, then you'll like this book. Otherwise, it might interest you in some parts and bore you in others. I couldn't tell what the author was going for, except maybe to make a more cracked-out coming of age...more

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Jun 01, 2010 Kate Maddalena rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

This is an YA lit post-apocalyptic fantasy. World of Warcraft takes over St. Paul, Minnesota.

If you have a 15-year-old, he or she should read it.

My ultimate impression, though, is that there were too many ideas to fit in one book. I'd like to know all of the stories, slowly, and instead we sort of dip in to 16 or so, and the whole thing turns out half-baked.

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Feb 07, 2012 Foreign added it

Shelves: us-bantamdell

Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead author Alan DeNiro's TOTAL OBLIVION, MORE OR LESS,in which a teenage girl travels the Mississippi with her dysfunctional family in a bizarre post-apocalyptic America, to Juliet Ulman at Bantam Dell, in a nice deal, by Colleen Lindsay at FinePrint Literary Management (World English).

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Apr 25, 2010 Robert rated it 3 of 5 stars

I could get used to shorter books like this whose story doesn't cross three generations/continents! This future is crazy, scary, funny. I did lose track of some characters that appeared early and reappeared later. It's a small world with a little too much coincidence. And the ending...

Still I liked it. 3 1/2 stars.

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Aug 06, 2011 Martine Taylor added it

Random and absurd. You would think that a post apocalyptic story of a girl from Minnesota would be exactly my kind of book, but it was just a little too odd - like a really weird dream that avoids any logical plot. I guess I like more plot in my stories and less absurdity. End was better than expected.

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About Alan DeNiro

I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania and went to school at the College of Wooster and the University of Virginia. My short story collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, was published in 2006 by Small Beer Press. It was a finalist for the Crawford Award. My first novel, Total Oblivion, More or Less, came out in 2009 from Ballantine/Spectra. In the starred review, Booklist said: "There aren't...more

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Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead: Stories

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“War stuttered, repeated its sentences, forgot its lessons, over and over.” — 1 person liked it

“She probably thought I was making a dumb joke, but sometimes history sounded like a dumb joke. History was either a dumb joke or a cruel joke.” — 1 person liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6370542-total-oblivion-more-or-less?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320483038l/6370542.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6370542-total-oblivion-more-or-less?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Total Oblivion, More or Less by Alan DeNiro[/url]

Total Oblivion, More or Less

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