Title: Fallout (Crank trilogy #3)
Author: Ellen Hopkins
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication Date: September 14, 2010
Source: borrowed from the good ol' public library
Summary from Goodreads: (SPOILERS from the first two books)
Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.
Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He's struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated. Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe. Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy. As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.
Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.
My Review:
As with any review of a second or third book in a trilogy, I shall warn you: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS from book #1 (Crank) and book #2 (Glass). You can check out those reviews here and here.
Got that out of the way? Good! On to Fallout.
Fallout is quite different from the first two books in this trilogy. I almost think of Crank and Glass as one big, long book, because they are both told from Kristina's perspective and have very little lag time in the time periods between the two novels. However, Fallout is about 17 years removed from the second novel, and is told from three perspectives: those of Kristina's oldest kids, Hunter, Autumn, and Summer. So, Fallout definitely stands out as a bit of a change-up in the trilogy.
In the beginning, I wasn't sure I liked this change in perspective. After being so immersed in Kristina's POV for 2 books, I was feeling too disconnected reading from her children's view. Also, the first two books, though technically fictional, were based on fact, whereas this book is entirely fictional (the real-life "Hunter" was only 13 when this was written, not 19 as he is in the novel). I could feel that switch in authenticity just a bit, because at times, it felt like Hopkins was trying too hard to prove a point. What I mean is: each child had very obvious ways that they were affected by Kristina's behavior. Hunter had anger issues, Autumn had OCD and panic attacks, etc. and this laundry list of "typical" outcomes from being raised by an addict didn't seem to flow naturally within the plot.
However--as I got to know the three protagonists more and more, their individual histories started to blend a bit better. I fell into their lives more easily. By the end, each character felt like a well-rounded person, and not just a poster child for the effects of drug abuse. Plus, Hopkins comes up with a pretty genius way to bring their stories together at the end, right alongside Kristina's, which tied things up nicely (even if their futures still seemed uncertain).
An added bonus is that the children's stories are interspersed with fictional news articles that catch you up on the lives of some of the side characters introduced in the first two books. Adam from Crank, Brad and his kids from Glass, etc. This was a nice addition to the central story.
Overall, despite my uncertain start, Fallout may have been the best of the three in this trilogy. The changing perspectives allowed me to see the first two books in a bit of a different light, while also highlighting the tidal wave of ill effects that Kristina brought down upon her friends and family during her drug addiction. Even though this book, of the three, is the most "fictional", I still find it sad that Hopkins wrote this often-depressing projection of the future based on the terrible battle that her own daughter is (still) facing with meth.
Just like with the first two books--I highly recommend this trilogy. And if you read the first two, your experience is definitely not complete until you finish Fallout.
Readers, what's the best trilogy you've read lately?
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