In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

I feel like I put Judy Blume up there at the same level as Beverly Cleary in the realm of children's book authors; I loved her Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing as a kid and many of her others. But I didn't know much about her reputation as an author who addressed many taboo subjects such as sexuality, menstruation, etc., in her children's and YA books. I guess the ones I read didn't really talk about those things? Or I just didn't notice when I was a kid? But anyway, this book is one of her books that she wrote for adults (I didn't even know she'd written for adults) and it was only published a few years ago (I didn't even know she was still alive). Obviously I hadn't ever thought that much about Judy Blume.

In the Unlikely Event is about the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, over the course of two or three months in the winter of 1951-1952 when three planes randomly crashed in their town one after the other. It is written from the perspective of a number of different people living in the town or affected by the crashes, but it is mostly about Miri Ammerman, a fifteen-year-old girl who is in love for the first time, and her reactions to what was going on. This is a novel with all fictional characters, but it is based on real events; three planes really did crash into one town during that winter, and Judy Blume was living there as a young woman about the same age as Miri. Knowing that made it all feel more real: the fear, the horror, and paranoia and rumors that the town was dealing with as they worried about what would happen next and why these planes kept crashing.

I really enjoyed listening to this book and I really got interested in it, much more than I anticipated I would. I think one of the best parts was the many narrators, how we got to hear from almost every character's perspective, even the ones that seemed like they would only be a minor characters. I thought Miri seemed like she was a little too perfect to be real--her comfortable, familiar life got blown up during the short period of this novel (and not just by the planes--everything changed for her), and she really didn't ever seem to act as upset as I would think would be warranted by a fifteen-year-old. But that is a really minor complaint compared to the strength of the rest of this book. It was a great story, despite a few twists that I really disliked (I hate any sort of adultery plotline, and there was a kind of minor one in here), and it was flawlessly written. It's so nice to read/listen to something that doesn't have awkward dialogue ever in it. I'm glad to have listened to it.