Judy Blume's final novel for adults: In the Unlikely Event
by eapearce
Beloved author Judy Blume, who is best known for her wonderful books for teens, including such favorites as Are You There God?, It’s Me, Margaret and Deenie, has written her first book for adults in 17 years. Reviewers have called this newest book—titled In the Unlikely Event—a “slice of life”… Blume’s own life, that is. When she was a teenager, in her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, three commercial airliners crashed over a period of a few months in the early 1950s, killing over one hundred people. Her father, a dentist, was called to help identify some of the bodies. Blume has said that she had kept most of her memories of these frightening and scarring events to herself over the years, but felt compelled to share them after hearing writer Rachel Kushner talk about stories her mother told of her own life in the 1950s.
The heroine of In the Unlikely Event, Miri, is plucky and lovable, and Blume does a fascinating job describing life in the Fifties, from fashions and foods of the era, to larger belief systems that were prevalent at the time. Blume has created characters that were more directly affected by the plane crashes than she herself was, and uses them to imagine how their lives unfolded in the aftermath. Blume spent five years working on this novel, and it is as lovely as the rest of her works. She claims too, that it will be her final novel for adults: “Of course I said the same thing after Summer Sisters. I meant it then. But I think I mean it more now," she said. "I feel good about that. I feel elated about that. And at 77 I think that’s O.K.”
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