It's Only Temporary
by Eric Shapiro
What if we'd known for six weeks the earth was going to end, and today was finally the day? It's Only Temporary hits you like a chunk of meteorite hurtling towards Earth, blowing through reports of the mass suicides and religious conversions we'd all predict into startling new scenarios we would not. “A crazed lion tamer introducing his pets to human meat”?
The hero of Eric Shapiro's doomsday tale is not a hero at all, but every college kid who's smoked a little too much weed and hasn't found his direction and can't stop thinking about the girl who broke his heart. Sean has naturally assumed he's got his whole life ahead of him, but the approach of an enormous meteor is forcing everyone to get real real fast. This ordinary character, insightfully written, kept me constantly comparing what I'd do and feel in his position. The moments where he struggles between being a good son spending his last moments with his parents, and reuniting with the girl he scorned are especially poignant.
Once he chooses his destination, the story knocks him off course again and again. It's Only Temporary is a wild ride, and it sometimes threw me, but I couldn't help being impressed with Shapiro's invention. His writing is vivid and often poetic, evoking disorientation, horror and clock-ticking tension, then softening into tenderness and regret before the next crisis brings it back into hyper-focus.
In hindsight, it's fitting that the story crams several years' worth of experience into one last day. There won't be, as Sean says, other days. His efforts to remain decent and to open himself (literally, at one point) intensify as he encounters the spectrum of human behavior from sadism to selflessness. In a story of destruction and bleak uncertainty, Shapiro reminds us there is a "flesh-and-blood magnet that holds us together." Love matters, if nothing else does, and we still have this moment.
Suggested Links
|
Copyright (c) by Lisa Hannon, 2004. Lisa Hannon works for a research company and edits a corporate newsletter. Read more about her here. |
Prairie Den
Copyright 1996 - 2008, Prairie Den, LLC.