The Last Days of California
Mary Miller
Liveright, $24.95
Jess is the kind of 15-year-old girl who would be fun to know, but she doesn’t think anyone would really be interested.
She’s the narrator of Austin author Mary Miller’s “The Last Days of California,” and she’ll make you laugh and shake your head as she tries to figure out her place in the world while riding in a car with her evangelical mother and father and a rebellious older sister, Elise. They’re on a trip from their home in Montgomery, Ala., to California, where they plan to be among the last people in the United States to ascend to heaven in the rapture that’s been predicted by the evangelical preacher Harold Camping for May 21, 2011.
Along the way, Jess and Elise, who are wearing black T-shirts saying “King Jesus Returns!,” trade barbs and secrets in the back seat of the car and in various hotel rooms, where they take purloined swigs from their father’s whiskey. And like many teen siblings, the two share a lot of secrets from their somewhat preoccupied parents. The biggest secret: Elise is pregnant.
Jess sees Elise as something special, but in a funny kind of way. Elise, after all, is better looking, more popular, and a cheerleader, too. “Boys frequently told me she was a knockout and then waited expectantly for my response,” Jess tells us. “Of course, there was nothing to do but agree. She was a knockout and I wasn’t. What was there to say about it?”
And while Elise proclaims herself a vegetarian, Jess eats every kind of junk food imaginable and regards the trip to California as nothing more that a succession of Waffle Houses, Taco Bells, Targets, Starbucks and McDonald’s.
“Starbucks had the chocolate graham crackers I liked, and Love’s had a good selection of baked goods and ripe bananas,” Jess says.
At a Waffle House in Louisiana, she makes the funny-sad observation: “I looked around at the other diners: they were all hideous. I could live easily in a town like this.”
Jess decides that she’ll see the trip to California as an “information-gathering” adventure, but when she comments on other people, she’s actually revealing herself — a narrative voice that Miller beautifully maintains throughout the novel.
At a Pilot/McDonald’s truck plaza in Texas, for instance, Jess enters a restroom and stares at a woman’s feet in the stall next to hers. The feet “were wide and sunburnt and her toenails were too small for her toes. They were the ugliest feet I’d ever seen, but she was wearing expensive-looking sandals and the nails were painted and I thought it was nice that she did what she could with them.”
And after leaving the stall, Jess sees another girl standing in front of the mirror, using hairspray. “She was wearing tight black jeans tucked into a pair of leather boots, her face a smear of pinks and purples. She was probably a prostitute and would soon be caught up in a fireball, but now she was going about her business, making her hair as big as possible.” Gotta look good for the apocalypse, of course.
Elise, meanwhile, turns heads everywhere the family stops, in part because she’s wearing very short shorts and walks with a feminine swagger. When she’s not turning heads or flirting with boys, she’s keeping up a running banter with her father. Say, for instance that Elise says something about climate. Then her father dismisses such notions, saying the drastic weather events in recent years are actually a precursor to the End Times.
Elise’s response? She’ll “tweet Anderson Cooper for some hard stats.”
Elise “loved Anderson Cooper,” Jess tells us, and “thought of him as a personal friend. He was gay, though — never before had there been so many homosexuals.” Then she remembers the oft-quoted verse from Leviticus about men who lie with men, but doesn’t dwell on it, not when there are Yoo-hoos, Skittles, Snickers and caramel Bugles to contemplate.
Despite the novel’s inherent comedy, Miller never descends into mocking or condescension — toward either the teenagers or their parents. It’s a fine line to walk, but it’s clear that Miller wants us to understand that Jess respects and loves her parents, even if she doesn’t fully understand them.
It’s a heartbreaking, mordant portrait of teen angst. And it’s beautifully written — tight and clean and bristling with energy.
With “The Last Days of California,” Miller lays claim to being one of the rising talents of American fiction. A former fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, she previously published a collection of well-received short stories titled “Big World” in 2009.
This fall, the native of Jackson, Miss., will be leaving Austin to become the John and Reneé Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. That’ll be a full day’s drive from Austin, and I’m sure Jess will be tagging along, at least in spirit, pointing out the Waffle Houses and other culinary, cultural opportunities along the way.
About the Author
