Coming of Age at the End of Days: A Novel

Alice LaPlante

Aug 2015 · Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

About this ebook

A girl is lured into fanaticism in this psychological thriller with “stunning twists”—by the New York Times–bestselling author of Turn of Mind (San Francisco Chronicle).
 
Never one to conform, Anna always had trouble fitting in. Earnest and willful, she quickly learned, as a young girl, how to hide her quirks from her parents and friends. But at sixteen, a sudden melancholia takes hold of her life. Then the Goldschmidts move in next door.
 
The new neighbors are active members of a religious cult, and Anna is awestruck by both their son, Lars, and their fervent violent prophecies for the Tribulation at the End of Days. Within months, Anna’s life—her family, her home, her very identity—will undergo profound changes. But when her newfound beliefs threaten to push her over the edge, she must find her way back to the center, in this “crisp meditation on the deadly mixture of mental illness and religious charlatanism” (San Francisco Chronicle).
 
“LaPlante crafts prose that cuts to the quick and is the perfect vehicle for this dark tale. . . . A compelling read.” —The Seattle Times
 

Ratings and reviews

I read Coming of Age at the End of Days because I thoroughly enjoyed Alice LaPlante's Turn of Mind, a nifty psychological thriller featuring that most unreliable of narrators, a woman suffering from Alzheimer's. What I expected from her latest novel was the same level of complexity in puzzle-solving (albeit not in the context of a murder mystery); what I got was a hot mess. LaPlante's teenage protagonist is certainly unpredictable: Is she depressed and suicidal (although she prefers the term "melancholy")? A religious visionary à la Joan of Arc? An epileptic? Whatever else she is, Anna is an unsympathetic character (as are both of her parents), whose mental health issues feel like an artificial construct imposed by LaPlante to give her the "tangled relationships" her publisher extols. None of the characters' actions are believable, and LaPlante conveniently glosses over the major issues she has created for them by fast-forwarding almost three years to an epilogue, which contains no explanation as to how those issues were resolved. From my two vastly different reading experiences, I have concluded that LaPlante's strength lies in her mystery plotting, not in emotional family sagas. Fortunately the remaining LaPlante novel, A Circle of Wives, appears to be a mystery as well, so I can still look forward to reading it. My advice is that others do the same, skipping Coming of Age at the End of Days as an anomaly (I hope) in LaPlante's oeuvre. I received a free copy of Coming of Age at the End of Days through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

About the author

Alice LaPlante is an award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction. She teaches creative writing at Stanford University, where she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer. She also teaches in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. Her fiction has been widely published in Epoch, Southwestern Review, and other literary journals. Alice is the author of six books, including the LA Times bestseller Method and Madness: The Making of a Story (W.W. Norton 2009). Her first novel, Turn of Mind, was a New York Times , NPR, and American Independent Booksellers Association bestseller, won the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, and was named a New York Times and Booklist Editors’ Choice and a #1 IndieNextPick. She lives with her family in Northern California. Author website: alicelaplante.com