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tricapra's review
4.0
Some really good stories in this collection. These are not sweeping tales of mass destruction, but they are all about survival. Tiny slice-of-life in the world 'after'. The apocalypse isn't always obvious in these tales, often it's a mundane backdrop. People go on how they always have. That felt very real to me. The titular story was probably my favorite, and it absolutely gutted me.
ztaylor4's review
4.0
These stories all have excellent characters fleshed out effectively. Each story takes place after a different disaster, including AI sentience, zombies, personal crises, and societal collapse. The collection is varied, but it feels cohesive. Most of the stories left me sharing a void with a character by the end.
sarabz's review
4.0
A very interesting and enjoyable read. McHugh does a great job creating characters and pulling you into their world. I also enjoyed this as a collection about the apocalypse. The "after" in the collection's title describes part of that: it's about the people and the challenges they face rather than the details of how the world has changed. And in many of the stories we see that the world probably doesn't have to change that much for the premise to be plausible. And that created the most thought provoking aspects for me: the personal nature of an apocalypse - it doesn't have to impact everyone and can happen in small ways in different communities; and it's persistent presence - i ended up reflecting on how much in the world could already be described as apocalyptic and the ways in which segregation and privilege perpetuate that reality.
rienthril's review
4.0
A collection of stories most remarkable for its breadth - McHugh imagines the End of Things from many different places and points of impact: the Chinese factory girl, the American prisoner, the reluctant mother. Her characters are generally embraceable as the every-person, save at least one sociopath, enduring different degrees of post-apocalypse in their various marginalized positions in life. In nearly every story, each with a different crisis at play, her characters are coming to terms with a new, unsafe and otherworldly reality (zombies, worldwide economic collapse, flu epidemic, fatal food borne illness, etc.) while also grappling with the categories and other distances that complicate their relationship with the rest of the surviving world. Not every story hits the mark (at least one seems like a very out-of-place piece of surrealism), but those that do resonate profoundly.
lisawreading's review
3.0
The nine stories in After the Apocalypse focus, for the most part, on what happens next, once the worst has already happened. Whether disaster strikes in the form of zombies, computers run amok, bird flu, dirty bombs, or other types of contamination, life as we know it no longer exists. What the characters do next is what makes these stories interesting.
Particularly good were "The Naturalist", about a zombie preserve where condemned criminals are sent to serve their sentences; "Useless Things", about a dollmaker getting by while the world dries up around her; "The Lost Boy", whose main character has been in a fugue state for five years; and "Honeymoon", about a girl who just wants to have fun, scary medical experiments notwithstanding. For sheer quirkiness, though, I'd pick "Going to France" for its lovely absurdity.
On the downside, this collection seems to have been rather shoddily copy-edited. Typos abound: Acronyms have their letters reversed from one page to the next, character names are often misspelled (June/Jane, Franny/Fanny, etc), and on several occasions I had to stop and reread a sentence that was either mispunctuated or had a word missing.
Given that I typically don't care for short stories, I was more engaged by After the Apocalypse than I'd expected to be. Interesting stories, but the editing problems definitely were a distraction.
Particularly good were "The Naturalist", about a zombie preserve where condemned criminals are sent to serve their sentences; "Useless Things", about a dollmaker getting by while the world dries up around her; "The Lost Boy", whose main character has been in a fugue state for five years; and "Honeymoon", about a girl who just wants to have fun, scary medical experiments notwithstanding. For sheer quirkiness, though, I'd pick "Going to France" for its lovely absurdity.
On the downside, this collection seems to have been rather shoddily copy-edited. Typos abound: Acronyms have their letters reversed from one page to the next, character names are often misspelled (June/Jane, Franny/Fanny, etc), and on several occasions I had to stop and reread a sentence that was either mispunctuated or had a word missing.
Given that I typically don't care for short stories, I was more engaged by After the Apocalypse than I'd expected to be. Interesting stories, but the editing problems definitely were a distraction.
scheu's review
4.0
An enjoyable, thoughtful collection of stories that explore the meaning of apocalypse in both large and intimate settings. I remember when I first read China Mountain Zhang and what a lightning bolt to the brain it was. McHugh never disappoints!
60degreesn's review
3.0
Collection of science fiction short stories that range from fair to very good. Stories have an mild feminist focus on current dystopic trends.
tsharris's review
4.0
Finely rendered stories that focus less on the spectacle of apocalyptic devastation and more on how people remain people in spite of the wreckage. None of the scenarios she outlines is particularly novel, but McHugh is deft portraitist of the human psyche.
diz_tn's review
3.0
My favorite stories were "The Naturalist" and "Kingdom of the Blind," which, ironically, share a theme.