Narrator Kathleen McInerney creates a vibrant audio version of the interlocked lives, families, and generations in Judy Blume’s arresting, sometimes harrowing, new novel. In the early 1950s, Elizabeth, New Jersey, was a cheerful, confident town in the middle of the American Century when a freak series of plane crashes shattered assumptions and lives. Blume recalls the town’s shock, grief, and loss of faith in the goodness of life, all of which shape this devastating story without descending to melodrama. Well matched with Blume’s narrative control, McInerney’s vocal technique is marvelously flexible, distinguishing with easy shifts of tone a 9-year-old girl from a 15-year-old, not to mention men from women, and the midde-aged from the elderly. Together, they make this powerfully imagined, intricately plotted story unforgettable. B.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

…Blume has threaded these lives together in an essential way and given every one of them importance…Devastating secrets are uncovered, moving love stories play out or fade to black. Blume, whose fiction for adults has the same emotional immediacy as her books for children, makes us feel the pure shock and wonder of living, the ways we get through catastrophe—and the ways we fail. But our connections might save us. "Terrible things can happen in this life but being in love changes everything," one character says. We are all passengers in this world, Blume suggests, fastening our seatbelts, hoping we reach our desired destinations and bracing for what comes next.

09/28/2015
In 1952, the New Jersey town of Elizabeth is traumatized by three separate plane crashes in the span of one year. Blume’s novel explores the events of that tumultuous period through the eyes of 15-year-old Miri, her family, other residents of the town, and relatives of the victims. Narrator McInerney expertly voices the myriad of characters, ranging from small children to teenagers to the elderly, giving each a distinct voice and portraying the conflicting emotions and events, both large and small. In addition to the trauma of the plane crashes, Miri and her friends are going through adolescence, high school, first loves, and plans for college or jobs. Through her narration, McInerney is able to convey all the characters’ horror and reaction to the tragedies. She also captures their coming-of-age story, the little joys and sorrows and insecurities of growing up, the sense of small-town life in the 1950s—and the mature perspective of Miri as she returns to her hometown 35 years later for a memorial. This is a thoughtful, insightful tale, well told and well narrated. A Knopf hardcover. (June)

03/02/2015
The three fatal plane crashes that hit Elizabeth, N.J., during the winter of 1951–52 are the inspiration for Elizabeth-native Blume's latest adult novel (the first since 1998's Summer Sisters), in which young and old alike must learn to come to terms with technological disaster and social change. The novel opens in 1987, when Miri Ammerman's return to Elizabeth for a commemorative ceremony brings back memories of the year she turned 15. In flashback, readers are brought back to the 1950s—Kate Smith, Lilly Dache, J.D. Salinger, Korea—from a variety of perspectives: Miri; her single mom; her supportive uncle; her wise grandmother; Miri's best friend, Natalie, daughter of a workaholic dentist and his shopaholic wife; Christina, a Greek girl secretly dating an Irish boy; passengers on the ill-fated planes. Miri's uncle earns recognition for reporting on the crashes in the local newspaper, but when Miri writes about the reactions at school she lands in the principal's office. Disaster produces other unexpected developments: Miri's boyfriend saves lives, while Natalie hears dead people. Maintaining her knack for personal detail, Blume mixes Miri's familiar coming-of-age melodrama with an exploration of how disasters test character, alter relationships, and reveal undercurrents of a seemingly simple world. She evokes '50s music, ethnic neighborhoods, and Las Vegas in the early days, while posing the question, how do individuals, families, and communities, deal with disaster? Her answer may not be entirely new, but her novel is characteristically accessible, frequently charming, and always deeply human. 350,000-copy first printing. (June)

Makes us feel the pure shock and wonder of living. . . . Judy Blume isn’t just revered, she’s revolutionary.” —The New York Times Book Review

“[A] page-turner, emotionally resonant and down-to-earth. . . . Reading In the Unlikely Event is like reconnecting with a long-lost friend.” —The New Yorker

“Gives us everything that Blume is known (and beloved) for. . . . This novel is her most ambitious to date, and she lives up to its reach with her characteristic frankness, compassion, and charm.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Judy Blume is back—and on her game! . . . You won’t want to turn the last page.” —People

“A page-turner with cross-generational appeal. . . . Will appeal to loyal fans as well as new readers.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A fascinating novel. . . . Blume, in clear and forthright storytelling, creates realistic characters searching for happiness. . . . Just as dramatic as the devastation and panic caused by the crashes are Blume's ruminations on the mysteries of the human heart. ” —Chicago Tribune

“Judy Blume is still here, opening our eyes to the daily astonishments of life all these years later.” —USA Today

“Quite simply, extraordinary. . . . Utterly brilliant.” —The Observer (London)

“Blume succeeds in capturing the condition of an entire community. . . . No one captures coming-of-age milestones and stomach butterflies like Blume, and those scenes are worth waiting for.” —The Boston Globe

“Judy Blume’s writing is simply a delight. . . . Blume is a master at presenting the complexities of life. This novel is entertaining, heartbreaking, and redeeming.” —The Missourian

“Heartwarming.” —New York Daily News

“Satisfying, heartfelt. . . Delivers on the warm nostalgia that we remember from Blume’s earlier books and will appeal to her admirers—of which I am absolutely one—who regard any new book by this trailblazing literary and cultural icon as a celebratory event.” —Melissa M. Firman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Blume creates characters who are real and sympathetic.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Excellent and satisfying. . . Has all the elements of Blume’s best books: the complex relationships between friends and family members, the straight talk and lack of shame about sex, and, most of all, the compassionate insight into the pleasures and pains of growing up.” —Chicago Reader

“Has [Blume’s] signature warm, personal touch.” —Vogue.com

“Vividly rendered. . .  Blume deftly demonstrates just how different the personal fallout from tragedy can turn out to be. . . . As Blume proves over and over again not just in In the Unlikely Event but in all of her fiction, life does go on in spite of hardship. We love. We lose. We fail. We may fall. But the lucky ones, we try our best to endure.” —The Oregonian

“Soars. . . . It’s Judy Blume and, therefore, it’s gold.” —Newark Star Ledger

“Judy Blume is revered. She is claimed, and cherished, and clutched close to the hearts of American adolescents and former adolescents, everywhere that books are read. . . . Blume’s great gift is [her] personal touch; her unflinching but reassuring voice—that of a no-nonsense big sister who gives it to you straight, then gives you a hug.” —Buffalo News

“Characteristically accessible, frequently charming, and always deeply human.” —Publishers Weekly

“Compelling. . . . Smoothly written. . . . A new Blume novel will always be big news.” —Booklist (starred review)

11/01/2015
In the winter of 1951–52, three separate airplanes crashed into Elizabeth, NJ, near Newark Airport. Blume was a young teen at the time, and she revisits the events of those months in her latest novel told in the third person from multiple points of view. The main character, 15-year-old Miri Ammerman, lives in Elizabeth with her single mother, Rusty. Miri's Uncle Henry is a small-town journalist who makes a name for himself writing about the crashes for the local paper. Miri's grandmother Irene keeps the family fed and befriends a man who was widowed in the first crash. These and other protagonists' viewpoints help to build a picture of life in New Jersey in the early 1950s. Although there are many voices, Blume skillfully weaves their stories together so that it is always clear who each character is and what their connections are to one another. Miri experiences first love (with a non-Jewish boy) and begins to learn the truth about her father and his family. Her best friend Natalie, whose family and life Miri has always envied, begins a downward spiral into anorexia and believes that she is hearing messages from a dancer named Ruby who died on the first plane. This is a wonderful picture of a community living their lives while responding to not just one catastrophe but three. VERDICT Fans of Blume will clamor for this, but so, too, will any teen who enjoys a well-written coming-of-age novel that strongly evokes a specific time and place.—Sarah Flowers, formerly of Santa Clara County (CA) Library

2015-03-17
A beloved author returns with a novel built around a series of real-life plane crashes in her youth. Within 58 days in the winter of 1951-'52, three aircraft heading into or outbound from Newark Airport crashed in the neighboring town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, taking 116 lives. Blume (Summer Sisters, 1998, etc.), who was a teenager there at the time, has woven a story that mingles facts about the incidents and the victims—among them, Robert Patterson, secretary of war under Truman—with the imagined lives of several families of fictional characters. Though it's not always clear where truth ends and imagination begins, the 15-year-old protagonist, Miri Ammerman, is a classic Blume invention. Miri lives with her single mother, Rusty, her grandmother Irene, and her uncle Henry, a young journalist who makes his reputation reporting on the tragedies for the Elizabeth Daily Post. In addition to the crashes, one of which she witnesses firsthand, Miri faces drama with her mom, her best friend, the adviser of her school newspaper, and her first real boyfriend, an Irish kid who lives in an orphanage. Nostalgic details of life in the early '50s abound: from 17-inch Zeniths ("the biggest television Miri had ever seen") to movie-star haircuts ("She looked older, but nothing like Elizabeth Taylor") to popular literature—"Steve was reading that new book The Catcher in the Rye. Christina had no idea what the title meant. Some of the girls went on dates to Staten Island, where you could be legally served at 18....The Catcher in the Rye and Ginger Ale." The book begins and ends with a commemorative gathering in 1987, giving us a peek at the characters' lives 35 year later, complete with shoulder pads and The Prince of Tides. Though it doesn't feel much like an adult novel, this book will be welcomed by any Blume fan who can handle three real tragedies and a few four-letter words.