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ECHO OF THE BOOM

Maxwell Neely-Cohen

A riveting, contemporary, edgy debut novel.

Efram gets kicked out of every school in the known universe. Molly is raised in total isolation by survivalists. Steven grows up globetrotting with his ex-spy father. Chloe rules three thousand students with an iron fist. A frenetic journey through contemporary youth culture, Echo of the Boom follows the lives of these four characters as their narratives orbit and intertwine. They wage personal wars, grapple for power, and attempt to understand their roles in the future of society--or their destiny in hastening its destruction. The result is a mesmerizing collection of triumphs and calamities, a chronicle brimming with the language of music, social networking, and video games. Equal parts Gossip Girl and Gravity's Rainbow, Echo of the Boom represents a new kind of literature explicitly suited to twenty-first century. Maxwell Neely-Cohen was born and raised in Washington D.C., where he spent his teenage years skateboarding and DJing. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, he lives in New York City. Echo of the Boom is his first novel.

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Book Published 2014-04-01 by Rare Bird Books / Barnacle

Comments

A brilliant dissection of American youth culture, Echo of the Boom tears apart the stereotypical depictions of young people and instead offers a searing, poignant, and achingly real alternative. Do not mistake it for fantasy, the result is a disturbing yet accurate description of how many young people navigate the world today.

[An] emotionally engaging look at the prospective end of days.

The four teen survivors and survivalists at the core of Maxwell Neely-Cohen's debut novel are at once terrifyingly wise and authentically self-absorbed. Steeped in both the pop milieu of this minute and the prophecies of 2,000 years ago, Echo of the Boom the spiritual prequel to The Road that we never thought to ask for.

[T]he novel conveys a simple message: yes, the world is miserable, but technology can’t take all of the blame. These young adults are of the generation “born after the fall of the wall but before the fall of the towers.” In such chaotic times, they understand full well that a trigger can’t pull itself.

Echo of the Boom is one of the strangest and most exciting novels I've come across in a long time. It reads like Mean Girls seen through a fever dream, treating of the ecstasies and agonies of being young with apocalyptic anxieties flaming on the horizon.