Please excuse the “casually holding my book in front of a plant like one does” caliber of this photo - I’m tired but really want to talk about this book.
I can’t resist a good cold-war era doomsday read. Idk, maybe in a twisted way it makes me feel better about current times? Luckily, my local little free library totally provided for me last weekend. I think this is technically a young adult novel, which isn’t technically my jam, but O’Brien’s sparse writing and stoic portrayal of just about the worst situation possible means it doesn’t feel definitely juvenile in the least.
Z for Zachariah turned out to be little like how I expected it to be. I didn’t expect the new Garden of Eden to be located in….Cumberland Gap? West Virginia? It’s unclear. I didn’t expect a crash course in survival farming. I didn’t expect a 1970’s book to put the future of humanity on the shoulders of a teenage girl. I didn’t expect, but probably should have, that toxic masculinity would find a way to rear its ugly head even in the apocalypse.
We meet the hero of our book, Anne, approximately one year after an ambiguous but total war has decimated the United States. Anne’s family, despite initially surviving the blast, have died. Anne herself is left alone in a valley that has been somewhat sheltered from fallout. And frankly, Anne is kicking ass in this new world - she’s been living off supplies from the town’s country store while building up her own stocks of milk, water, and vegetables. She is getting pretty tired of reading the same books over and over again, though. She even has an adorable doggy friend to keep her company (WARNING - it doesn’t end well for the dog so try not to get attached). Anne’s fragile balance is disrupted when a strange man arrives in her valley, having survived the fallout in a radioactive-proof suit. Anne’s decision to engage with the man and their subsequent interactions pose a simple question: what does it mean to be a social being in a post-social world?
The story is a slow boil, but since we know from the beginning that this man is going to mean bad news, it’s incredibly suspenseful. When it does hit the fan, things unravel quickly - the last third of the book is a wild ride. Ultimately, Z for Zachariah tackles complex questions about what “surviving” looks like to different people, what it means to preserve humanity, and the painful side of hope.
After I finished, I did a quick Google search to see if it had been adapted into a movie, because I would 100% dig a good adaptation of this. Imagine my surprise to find that there had actually been a 2015 adaption starring Margot Robbie, Chris Pine, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Yes, I just listed three headlining actors in a story about the only two people left on earth. Surprise - director Craig Zobel takes the original material in a different direction entirely. All the characters are aged up, which I suppose is good because he also introduces a love triangle between Robbie, Pine, and Ejiofor (because every apocalypse needs a messy romance). Come on, guys - let teenagers and kids be heroes. Margot Robbie dons lingerie and engages in a death wrestle with an Appalachian accent. Ejiofor is moody, Pine is… piney, and the whole thing is set in West Virginia but filmed in New Zealand. Wowzers.
I generally think it’s ok for a book adaptation to veer from the particulars of the story if the themes of the book are faithfully portrayed, but I’m not sure I can make it through this one devolving into a feminist rant. There is also a BBC adaptation from the 1980s that’s set in a Welsh village, and, according to the few reviews I’ve found, is quite terrifying. That one I definitely want to watch. What do you all think?