Synopses & Reviews
Michael Williams, in Melbourne’s
The Age, wrote of this award-winning, dazzling debut collection, “By turns horrific and beautiful . . . Humanity at its most fractured and desolate . . . Often moving, frequently surprising, even blackly funny . . .
Things We Didn’t See Coming is terrific.” This is just one of the many rave reviews that appeared on the Australian publication of these nine connected stories set in a not-too-distant dystopian future in a landscape at once utterly fantastic and disturbingly familiar.
Richly imagined, dark, and darkly comic, the stories follow the narrator over three decades as he tries to survive in a world that is becoming increasingly savage as cataclysmic events unfold one after another. In the first story, “What We Know Now”—set in the eve of the millennium, when the world as we know it is still recognizable—we meet the then-nine-year-old narrator fleeing the city with his parents, just ahead of a Y2K breakdown. The remaining stories capture the strange—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes funny—circumstances he encounters in the no-longer-simple act of survival; trying to protect squatters against floods in a place where the rain never stops, being harassed (and possibly infected) by a man sick with a virulent flu, enduring a job interview with an unstable assessor who has access to all his thoughts, taking the gravely ill on adventure tours. But we see in each story that, despite the violence and brutality of his days, the narrator retains a hold on his essential humanity—and humor.
Things We Didn’t See Coming is haunting, restrained, and beautifully crafted—a stunning debut.
From the Hardcover edition.
Review
“Brilliant, unexpected, wide-ranging and deeply moving, the story of one family's extraordinary -- and sometimes otherworldly -- negotiation of the very real hazards of life.” -- Maile Meloy, author of
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want ItReview
“Brilliant, unexpected, wide-ranging and deeply moving, the story of one family's extraordinary—and sometimes otherworldly— negotiation of the very real hazards of life.” –Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
Review
"Remarkable ... at once magical and very normal, a wishful fantasy about the strength it can take to love one's family members well."
A -
Entertainment Weekly
“I loved this book… What I thought was so wonderful and moving about this book is, on the one hand, its filled with really careful observation of quotidian details—it feels so real—and then there are these twists… This is really what a great storyteller does.” -Bill Goldstein, “Bills Books,” NBC New York
“Brilliant, unexpected, wide-ranging and deeply moving, the story of one family's extraordinary—and sometimes otherworldly— negotiation of the very real hazards of life.” -Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It
“Steven Amsterdam is a superhero and his power is to create stunningly crafted, heartbreaking stories that are as fun as they are brilliant. In this story of a ‘super family, the greatest ability on display is Amsterdam's own control of story, which outshines the fantastic by being even more so.” -Mat Johnson, author of Pym
"There are moments when the writing's simplicity becomes its own kind of superpower… the book soars." -Publishers Weekly
“Pulses with hope… It's a tantalizing novel, one thats both sharp and touching, and Steven Amsterdam is fast becoming one of our most interesting writers.” -The Canberra Times
"A wonderful novel: imaginative, intelligent, empathetic. It's like a cross between The Corrections and The Slap, except without any of the gloom or rage and with the addition of something that may or may not be either a form of magic realism or simply that old staple of the literary art, metaphor.” -Sydney Morning Herald
"Surreal and fantastic… [Amsterdam] develops his own kind of reality that has more than a tinge of fantasy." -Kirkus
PRAISE FOR THINGS WE DIDN'T SEE COMING
“Breathtakingly strange… the kind of book that can inspire us to think differently about the world and entertain us at the same time.” -Washington Post
“Feels like a genuine discovery… Timely and unexpectedly moving.” -The Daily Beast
“Brilliant… Thoughtful, intelligent, savvy… full of horror and hope and compels you to think.” -Raleigh News and Observer
“Dont read this book in bed unless you want to stay up past your bedtime thrilled by the discovery of a new writer… [A] stunning read.” -The Millions
Synopsis
Richly imagined and darkly comic, Things We Didn’t See Coming follows a single man over three decades as he tries to survive in an increasingly savage apocalyptic world that is at once utterly fantastic and disturbingly familiar. Here, coming-of-age is complicated not only by family troubles and mercurial love affairs, but treacherous weather, unstable governments, pandemic, and technology run amuck.
Synopsis
In this incandescent novel, a family’s superpowers bestow not instant salvation but the miracle of accepting who they are.
“Okay, tell me which you want,” Alek asks his cousin at the outset of What the Family Needed. “To be able to fly or to be invisible.” And soon Giordana, a teenager suffering the bitter fallout of her parents’ divorce, finds that she can, at will, become as invisible as she feels. Later, Alek’s mother, newly adrift in the disturbing awareness that all is not well with her younger son, can suddenly swim with Olympic endurance. Over three decades, in fact, each member of this gorgeously imagined extended family discovers, at a moment of crisis, that he or she possesses a supernatural power.
But instead of crimes to fight and villains to vanquish, they confront inner demons, and their extraordinary abilities prove not to be magic weapons so much as expressions of their fears and longings as they struggle to come to terms with who they are and what fate deals them. As the years pass, their lives intersect and overlap in surprising and poignant ways, and they discover that the real magic lies not in their superpowers but in the very human and miraculous way they are able to accept, protect, and love one another.
Synopsis
In this incandescent novel, a family’s superpowers bestow not instant salvation but the miracle of accepting who they are.
“Okay, tell me which you want,” Alek asks his cousin at the outset of What the Family Needed. “To be able to fly or to be invisible.” And soon Giordana, a teenager suffering the bitter fallout of her parents’ divorce, finds that she can, at will, become as invisible as she feels. Later, Alek’s mother, newly adrift in the disturbing awareness that all is not well with her younger son, can suddenly swim with Olympic endurance. Over three decades, in fact, each member of this gorgeously imagined extended family discovers, at a moment of crisis, that he or she possesses a supernatural power.
But instead of crimes to fight and villains to vanquish, they confront inner demons, and their extraordinary abilities prove not to be magic weapons so much as expressions of their fears and longings as they struggle to come to terms with who they are and what fate deals them. As the years pass, their lives intersect and overlap in surprising and poignant ways, and they discover that the real magic lies not in their superpowers but in the very human and miraculous way they are able to accept, protect, and love one another.
About the Author
Steven Amsterdam is the author of Things We Didnt See Coming, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won The Age Book of the Year Award, among other honors. A native New Yorker and a nurse, he lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Reading Group Guide
1. Each chapter involves a different kind of disaster or milestone of decline. How far into the future do the different chapters feel and why? Which events or societal shifts seem possible?
2. The only chapter set in the past, “What We Know Now” takes place on the eve of Y2K, with the narrator’s father panicking about the grid collapsing. How does this starting point—about a disaster that didn’t happen—change your reading of the apocalyptic changes that come in later chapters?
3. Things We Didn’t See Coming has an unusual structure. Each chapter is set at least three years apart. Most conclude with the narrator finding himself in uncertain territory, with issues that seem to be resolved by the start of the next chapter. Are these linked short stories or is it a discontinuous narrative? How do the chronological gaps between the chapters shape your reading of the narrator’s life? What questions do they leave unanswered?
4. The Guardian wrote “Amsterdam’s tone is refreshingly unapocalyptic.” What sort of counterpoint does the narrator’s wry outlook provide to the severity of the setting?
5. Neither the narrator nor the book’s terrain is ever specifically named. What does having an unnamed narrator do for a story like this? Where is this story set? Why?
6. While watching Robocop, the narrator comments, “the futuristic stuff is interesting because they got everything so wrong.” (p. 122) Given that Things We Didn’t See Coming is mostly set in the future, how does his comment relate? Does the book feel like a predictive text?
7. Recent novels that take place in dystopian settings, including Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, similarly portray worlds of deprivation and social breakdown. In what way is Things We Didn’t See Coming different from other contemporary books about the future?
8. “Land Management looks the other way as long as we clear out the stragglers. They keep us on horses to prevent us from carrying away too much of the take. They say it saves on fuel, but the way it is now they’ve got to provide me as well as my horse with enough meds to stay functional. A jeep would be cheaper and faster.” (p. 50) “I had just started in Verification, [Margo] had finished training to work in Grief, but both of us were helping out Rescue.” (p. 95) Despite the continual chaos, government control and bureaucracy is evident throughout much of Things We Didn’t See Coming. What aspects of its presence seem familiar? As the narrator works in several different government roles over the course of the book, how does his relationship to the system change?
9. Do the narrator and Margo have a “Chemical Basis for Love” (p. 99)? Is a “practical union” (p. 111) a good solution for them?
10. Health plays a significant role in the book. Illness impacts the grandmother, the narrator, as well as his tour group (“My niche is the last-hurrah set, folks with at least two major cancers or a primary ailment, but still sporty enough to manage a little adventure.”) (p. 184). To what extent does it inform the decisions he makes?
11. It is sometimes said that inside every dystopian novel is a utopian novel trying to get out. If this is true, and they are two sides of one idea, why might dystopian novels be more prevalent at present? Several reviewers have spoken of a sense of hope throughout Things We Didn’t See Coming. Where do you find it?
(For a complete list of available reading group guides, and to sign up for the Reading Group Center enewsletter, visit: www.readinggroupcenter.com.)
The questions, topics for discussion, and suggestions for further reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Steven Amsterdam's acclaimed debut, Things We Didn’t See Coming. An unnamed narrator survives through thirty years of a strange-familiar future, navigating the varieties of expected apocalypse. With an assured voice that is both sensitive and wry, Amsterdam turns the struggle to the true surprises of life—love, trust, and family.