The ostensible storyline is a bit of a pretext by which to deliver some terrifying truths about the shadow that stalked us for so long. But it works; the storyline keeps you riveted in the face of what would otherwise be sheer numbness. It takes us from a couple of kids who just had an oops and got pregnant, practically the definitive quotidian drama, through buffet after buffet--the explosions, the death, the disfigurement, the animals writhing in the flames, the mass PTSD, the constant wind, the epidemics, the total overwhelm, the impossibility of heroism, the impossibility of self-defense, the impossibility of survival, the Riddley Walker-esque breakdown of language and humanity, the climactic moment of "crude intercourse", the flare of life, and then the birth of a stillborn, deformed baby, representing the future--forever. Better Nineteen Eighty-Four. ( )