In the Unlikely Event

When Judy Blume was a child living in the small city of Elizabethtown, NJ, during the winter of 1951-52 three separate airplane crashes occurred in quick succession. In this adult novel she revisits that period and place, drawing on the facts and layering them over with fiction. At its heart this is a novel about secrets; the ones we keep, the ones we tell, and who we are willing to tell them to. The harm of withholding information, even when we believe in our reasons. The hurt that can be inflicted by a well or ill-timed revelation. Miri is the central character, only fifteen but remarkably level-headed. She learns the power of secrets over the course of the novel; their pleasures at first, and later their pain. We get to know the show more thoughts of a host of other characters as well. I scoffed a bit over the cast of characters offered as a reference, but very shortly and often I was referring back to it - there are a LOT of people to immediately keep track of, but it gets easier.

Besides secrets, there are important lessons here as well about the different ways that people grieve and cope when tragedy strikes. The airplane crashes are a catalyst for much of what happens, but the offshoots are myriad and Blume knows how to keep her story going even after she runs out of planes. Her spare approach isn't my preferred style. I like a higher percentage of descriptive passages so that the story doesn't feel like it's plunging forward even in periods of low action. It does have the advantage of keeping the pages turning, provided that you can get past its rapid-fire opening and find your bearings. I love her capturing of the 1950s like only someone who was there can do: the music, the fashions, the pastimes, the way people spoke, the cultural mores. There were many characters to like, several developments I didn't see coming, and the ending ties things together without becoming too neat and tidy a package. Thank you again, Judy. I feel like we have an adult-to-adult relationship now. show less

I almost just posted a gif of someone's head exploding since that was my reaction while reading this book.

Judy Blume takes real life events that happened while she was growing up in New Jersey, and uses these events to shape the lives of the fictional townspeople in her book. If you are interested you can go here to read more about these plane crashes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_6780. I honestly did not know that much at all about these events and was shocked that there were three plane crashes in short succession in Elizabeth, New Jersey in the 1950s. Besides that interesting historical factoid this book really was not at all what I expected it to be. I have read other Judy Blume adult novels and some I had show more a hard time with Summer Sisters and others I thought were really good like Wifey.

Using the events of the 1950s, Judy Blume follows several families in the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey and we get to read about all of the ways the crashes changed the town and people.

So the big problem for me was the abundance of characters we got in this book. All told in third person, we go skipping around a bunch of different characters every other page or so. There is a heading for each change to the POV (which by the way is totally necessary) since after a while, I had a hard time keeping straight who was talking, what was going on with them, etc.

I think that Miri Ammerman is supposed to be the main character in this book, however, we also focus on characters such as Miri's best friend Natalie, her brother Steven, Natalie's mother and father, Miri's uncle and Miri's uncle's girlfriend, Miri's boyfriend, Miri's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend, etc. It was too much.

It also didn't help that I really didn't care for Miri and found her to be boring. There is a scene where Miri writes an op-ed piece for her school newspaper about the plane crashes and hypothesis that someone is doing it in order to target children and I rolled my eyes. This scene was supposed to set up how Miri is going to be a great writer someday apparently. Miri and her mother at times were not sympathetic characters at all.

I think this could have been a stronger novel if we had cut out all of the extraneous people, by either focusing on Miri, or just Miri's family. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people and plots that were going on with everyone.

Due to the sheer number of characters, the flow of the novel was all wrong from start to finish. It's hard to keep the flow going if every other page you are jumping back and forth between people, and then not following up with said person for about 20 pages, or in some cases, not at all. It was maddening to me.

The writing at time reminded me of classic Judy Blume (talking about feelings down there, periods), but it didn't grab me like older Judy Blume novels. I found myself bored and at times caught myself yawning while reading. It didn't help that we had run on sentences all of the time, and I had to go back to figure out who Blume was talking about when she decided to go and highlight another tertiary character out of the blue. Also when we have Blume depicting the plane crashes it just reads like a manual. I had the same problem when I read Alice Hoffman's The Museum of Extraordinary Things. Taking a real life event and using that to shape a book is a good idea. But it felt like the event was shoehorned in the book and didn't really have much to do with the book at all.

The setting of the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey really didn't come alive for me at all. I think it could have, if some portions were cut. I was really confused by the layout of the town, and also trying to understand the different schools, neighborhoods, etc.

The ending kind of made me sigh. Miri even in her 50s apparently is still ridiculous. I just shrugged my shoulders and was glad to set this book aside. I would only recommend to hard core Judy Blume fans who want to read her first novel in 15 years. show less

As a young girl, I devoured everything written by Judy Blume, from Superfudge to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Forever as well as her adult novels Smart Women, Wifey, despite the fact I wasn’t yet even a teenager. I remember being excited when her third adult novel, Summer Sisters, was published in 1998 and seventeen years later we finally have a fourth and, Judy Blume herself confesses, her last, In the Unlikely Event.

While the tone and style of Blume’s writing remains remarkably familiar, the subject of this novel is quite different from what some may expect. Inspired by a series of passenger airplanes crashed in Elizabeth, New Jersey within a three-month period in 1951–1952, the author brings to life three show more generations of families, friends, and strangers, who are all profoundly affected by these events, either directly or indirectly.

While Blume employs multiple points of view in the narrative it is teenager Miri Ammerman who has the strongest voice. Against the background of such frightening community tragedy, Miri struggles with the typical trials of adolescence, such as identity, friendship, family and first love. Meanwhile her Uncle Henry makes his name as the journalist who covers the incidents, her best friend, Natalie, is haunted by a plane crash victim, and an elderly man mourning his wife beds down on her grandmother’s couch. The large cast may be off-putting to some readers but I felt the the varied perspectives enriched the narrative.

Blume successfully brings to life the facts surrounding the New Jersey plane crashes, honouring the real life victims of the tragedies. She authentically evokes the era that heralded social change in America, exploring issues such as changing morality and political unrest.

Written with genuine compassion and insight, and with finely drawn characterisation, In the Unlikely Event is an engaging story of life’s ordinary and extraordinary events. show less

Judy Blume was an eighth grader in Elizabeth, New Jersey, when 3 airplanes crashed into her town over the course of 2 months. In this book, she tells a fictionalized version of the residents living (& some dying) in these unfathomable events. She conveys the very traumatic experience for young adults and teenagers. while told from a young teenager’s perspective, it is an adult novel. At the end of each chapter, she includes narrative from the Elizabeth newspaper, sometimes about the crashes, and more often news of the world. This puts the reader into a deeper perspective of how this affected the town. I found the story very well written, and hard to put down. It felt important to know how everyone coped and how it affected their show more lives. Definitely recommended. show less

I had the the benefit of coming to In the Unlikely Event as someone new to Judy Blume. Though I'm familiar with her name and books, largely through working in a bookstore, I didn't grow up reading her. While I might end up going on a Blume binge now that I've read through some reviews and seen how big of an impact her writing has made in so many lives, I enjoyed being new to her writing in this instance because I didn't feel the weight of expectation looming over the story.

The bare bones: I enjoyed this book immensely.

I have a weakness for the depths plunged by talented multiple POV authors such as Ken Follett, George R.R. Martin, et al. I'm mesmerized by the intricacies. Blume's Unlikely Event mesmerized in that regard. It's intense show more in its intricacies as well as its varied events. Intense enough that I found myself wanting to take small breaks here and there because Blume delves into emotional territory in a very starkly heady way. Plunging into those layers of experience from so many different angles with such aplomb takes enormous skill and I got the sense that Blume spent a lot of time with her characters along the way. A sense that was confirmed in her afterward as she shares the years that she was working on this project and how much research and personal experience went into it. As silly as it may sound, this book feels like a close to the heart project and I believe that all the time and effort Blume spent on this story was well spent and is well evidenced.

Again, it's intense. There are characters I didn't like, didn't necessarily relate to. Just as there were characters I found myself invested in, characters I connected with and understood. But the beauty is that there are so many different emotional and physical experiences in this book that it feels like the kind of book you can read at various times in your life, garnering something a bit different from it each time. I think this is what I most responded to during this read, the feel of an infinite experience that is waiting to become time-worn and prove its durability.

That aside, it is not action-action-action. This is not Game of Thrones set in New Jersey, there are some slow/slower parts as you read through the spawned ripples of the plane crashes this story centers around. For me, the slow parts seemed few and far between and they ended up offering me good places to put the book down for a bit and come back to it.

I did want more at the end. Though Blume sums up each thread more than adequately, there was a tapering. The tapering makes sense, both in the plot as well as in the fact that, sadly, books have to end at some point or another. But I ended up so invested in some characters that I got, and remain, a tad bit greedy as to the details of their fates. show less

I was actually going to give this book a lower rating, because I thought the plot device of three airliners crashing into Elizabeth in a matter of months was just so unrealistic as to be unbelievable. Was I surprised to learn that it actually happened! Having lived in that area of NJ for 30 years, it was fun coming across place names and descriptions that I knew. I liked the characters and enjoyed the story, although at times it dragged a little.

I always associate Judy Blume with YA books, and didn't realize this was geared to a much wider audience. Based on true facts and events, the story of a series of plane disasters in New Jersey during the years after World War II, is so attention grabbing, so well told, that the reader does not want to put this one down. I was up very late two nights in a row finishing this one. The characters are instantly accepted and believable, and the riveting story takes the reader on a true roller coaster of emotions. It definitely is a book that would make a great Christmas gift for readers from 13 to 100. For those of us who grew up in the post-war era of the 50's it's a true tr