Things We Didn't See Coming III, Steven Amsterdam

The hard times continue in this ever-evolving and riveting collection from Steven Amsterdam. I will say that my all time favorite novel about the end of the world, The Road, echoes in the story Dry Land just a little bit, but when you send a man out into the rain, to clear people out from their property, it brings back those terrifying memories. Our hero is navigating an incredible deluge, the remote countryside is brimming with puddles and terrified wildlife. I think Amsterdam is making the point in reverse about urban sprawl, and where the animals go when today’s society build on everything possible. In this case we witness stampedes, and nature turns on it’s inhabitants, people and animals. Weather has suddenly reared it’s head in this collection and we find that Amsterdam is pulling in civilization from the outskirts first, riddled with deperate people, and savage climates. I guess he saw the same movie I just did, The Last Winter.

The same tone in the first two stories continues here, with the narrator well worn, but still surging forward towards some unseen promise of redemption. Will he manage to get people out of their houses and to safety? It’s not possible, but plausible. We meet a mother and daughter who seem more desperate than they look, and mom decides that our hero needs a little love. It’s a chiseled interior at this point, and we’re really only seeing what we need to see, it’s tight story that shows incredible discipline. There is the outside possibility of things getting stolen, wine bottles, art work, but the narrator discovers things are not at all what they seem. He rode in a horse who left him shit out of luck right away, and almost makes it impossible for him to get back to civilization. I don’t know where we’ll go from here, if we’ll see another point of view, or another level of collapse from a world that is clearly falling apart.

-JR

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