It’s Christmas, so that means one thing: It’s time to read books about the end of the world.
Of course, The Last Days of California isn’t about the end of the world, not really. It’s about a family and the lies they tell themselves and each other, and the complicated, broken way that they’re holding themselves together.
In that sense, it is the perfect Christmas book.
The dad thinks that the world is ending and is driving across the country from Alabama to California. The mom doesn’t seem to be terribly invested in the world ending, but she’s a peacekeeper, so she goes along with it. There are two teenage daughters – the older daughter is very much the popular girl, and the younger one is narrating the story. She resents her sister, sometimes, for being pretty and skinny, in a very pained teenage way.
They’re Evangelical Christians, and the father is the one who is outwardly invested in their faith, distributing printed pamphlets about the end of the world and encouraging the family to spread the gospel of apocalypse. Apocaspel? He sees mixed success in getting his family to participate in his mission, and he’s in the process of working through his own stuff as well.
Sometimes when I tell people that I’m Christian, or that I grew up pretty involved in church, I wonder if they imagine this:
I fingered my gold-plated ring on my gold-plated chain. The ring said PURITY on the outside; on the inside it had my initials: JEM. It was cheap and ugly and Elise had the same one hanging from her own chain. We’d gone to a purity ball, made pledges. We’d worn white dresses, and our father had gotten down on one knee in a school gymnasium to slip the rings on our fingers, first Elise, then me. This had been four years ago, before I’d even gotten my period. Before we’d known better, Elise said, but we’d worn them so long they were a part of us.
The Last Days of California show how family members are grappling with their faith, and how their individual struggles with faith challenge the group in their mission to reach California before the world ends. It was different and well-written, but the ending left something to be desired. It ends with much more of an “eh” than with something that feels particularly final.