The End As I Know It: A Novel of Millennial Anxiety [Hardcover]

Kevin Shay (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 26, 2006

An edgy and hilarious novel about one young man’s attempt to alert his friends to the cataclysm sure to arrive on New Year’s Eve, 1999

It’s 1998. Or, as Randall Knight sees it, Y2K minus two. Randall, a twenty-five-year-old children’s singer and puppeteer, has discovered the clock is ticking toward a worldwide technological cataclysm. But he may still be able to save his loved ones—if he can convince them to prepare for the looming catastrophe. That’s why he’s quit his job, moved into his car, and set out to sound the alarm. The End as I Know It follows Randall on his coast-to-coast Cassandra tour. His itinerary includes the elementary schools that have booked him as a guest performer and the friends and relatives he must awaken to the crisis. When nobody will heed his warning, Randall spirals into despair and self-destruction as he races from one futile visit to the next. At the end of his rope, he lands with a family of newly minted survivalists in rural Texas. There, he meets a woman who might help him transcend his millennial fears and build a new life out of the shards of his old one.

Like Walter Kirn’s novel Up in the Air, The End as I Know It is a high-concept look at American culture that is by turns hilarious and poignant, and it manages to recall a memorable period in very recent history while at the same time shedding light on our current social moment.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Former McSweeney's online editor Shay travels in his debut novel to the now-stale heart of late-'90s political hysteria and pre-millennial angst. The "end" of the title refers to the End of the World as We Know It (TEOTWAWKI for short), the global meltdown that is to occur as a result of the unchecked Y2K computer crisis. Randall Knight, a former elementary school teacher, quits his job and tours the country as a roving puppeteer, hoping to make others believe in the impending computer-related doomsday. Shay puts the reader in the quixotic situation of rooting for a protagonist whose every action is in the service of a supremely puerile cause; as Randall crisscrosses the U.S. in search of allies, running headlong from his own problems into the maw of an imagined global catastrophe, it's hard not to feel his pain (in the words of another presence whose then-current impeachment trial haunts this book). If the book ends with more of a whimper than a bang, perhaps that is only to be expected in a novel about an impending but never-arriving tragedy. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Praise for The End as I Know It

“The End as I Know It is a smart, funny, disturbing and, yes, charming novel that had me waxing nostalgic for the not-so-long-ago days when a simple digital anomaly was the only thing vying for attention in the pantheon of Things That Scare the Living Crap Out of Me.”
—James P. Othmer, author of The Futurist

“Kevin Shay brilliantly mines tension from the gap between the fears of 1999 and the reality of Y2K, and he does it with incredible humor and heart. The End as I Know It is a funny, profound, effortless book.”
—Kevin Guilfoile, author of Cast of Shadows

"After reading just a few pages of The End As I Know It, I knew that I did not want it to end. Kevin Shay is a wonderfully funny novelist, a creator of deft (sometimes daft) comic moments, and his story is completely irresistible."
—Sean Wilsey, bestselling author, Oh the Glory of It All

"Kevin Shay has come up with a funny, twisted, razor-sharp lens with which to view the very distant recent past. The End as I Know It will leave you laughing, and refusing to cry. A deeply rewarding journey for anyone who may have felt like the only American without the requisite bright future in America, circa 1999 — the only ones certain we weren't worth a million on paper. The party in America has been over for seemingly as long as one can remember, but then Kevin Shay turns up like your only friend who took the right kind of pictures. And somehow you feel better."
—Dan Kennedy, Author of Loser Goes First

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (December 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385518218
• ISBN-13: 978-0385518215
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,264,457 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laughing Towards the End of the World, March 20, 2007

By 

Brett Goldman (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The End As I Know It: A Novel of Millennial Anxiety (Hardcover)

Alfred Hitchcock once described the difference between shock and suspense as having a bomb suddenly go off without the viewer knowing its existence first (shock) to revealing the bomb to the viewer pre-explosion (suspense). Inherent in Mr. Shay's hilarious novel is the bomb (the Year 2000's impending digital doom) that we all know never detonated. So how can readers be engaged when the know the ultimate result is a fizzle that barely caused a burp in our daily lives?

The secret to ths book's success is in Mr. Shay's timeless characters and situations. Replace the year 2000 with Avian Flu, Global Warming, the threat of the Cold War, the Atom Bomb, or any End of the World scenario that has plagued us for generations - the threat is irrelevant. All that matters is Randall, our narrator, and his Gen-X, Gen-Y, Gen-whatever struggle to make something of his life. He battles clueless relatives and annoyed friends in his pursuit to "save" them from catastrophe. Yet he skewers other conspiracists who, to him, take their beliefs too far. In other words, to bastardize Groucho Marx, he doesn't want to belong to the only club that will actually have him as a member.

So we root for Randall as he watches the ticking clock and wrestles with his fears. That he also plays absurd children's songs at elementary schools with the help of some double-entendre named puppets adds to our pathos, and the novel's ample humour.

Mr. Shay gives us a narrator we can't trust, probably wouldn't befriend, and at times want to strangle for chucking away what's good in his life. But then, we all have Y2Ks to worry about, while others stare in wonder at our insistent ignorance to ignore the simple truths they all can see.

Hitchcock would have been proud at the trick here - that the supposed purpose for the book, the time bomb, is not nearly as important as the mirror the author holds up for us to observe. Warts and all, we have a blast doing it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative and funny, February 14, 2007

By 

Steve Benoff (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The End As I Know It: A Novel of Millennial Anxiety (Hardcover)

Kevin Shay is an excellent writer. Which is all the more important given the subject matter; we all know, of course, that the world didn't end in Y2K. Add to that the protagonist being a puppeteer.
Shay is witty and creative and even manages to create some tension along the way.
This book is an easy read and very easy to enjoy.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and true to life, December 31, 2006

By 

LikeToRead (OLNEY, MD USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The End As I Know It: A Novel of Millennial Anxiety (Hardcover)

I enjoyed reading this book. Through the eyes of protagonist, Randall, Kevin Shay amuses with tales of contemporary life that resonate. An often slow reader, I finished ... The End ... in a couple of days.