Exile from Eden: Or, After the Hole

by Andrew Smith, Andrew Smith (Illustrator)

Overview

“A marvel—endlessly inventive, witty.” —Booklist (starred review)

From New York Times bestselling author Andrew Smith comes the stunning, long-awaited sequel to the groundbreaking Printz Honor Book Grasshopper Jungle.

It’s been sixteen years since an army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises forced Arek’s family underground and into the hole where he was born; it’s the only home he’s ever known. But now, post-end-of-the-world, the army of horny, hungry praying mantises might finally be dying out, and Arek’s ready to leave the hole for good.

All he has are mysterious letters from Breakfast, a naked, wild boy traveling the countryside with his silent companion, Olive. Together, Arek and his best friend Mel, who stowed away in his van, navigate their way through the ravaged remains of the outside world.

This long-awaited sequel to the irreverent, groundbreaking Printz Honor Book Grasshopper Jungle is riveting, compelling, and even more hilarious and beautifully bizarre than its predecessor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534422247
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	09/22/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	477,572
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	900L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Andrew Smith is the author of several novels for young adults, including Winger, Stand-Off, 100 Sideways Miles, and the Michael L. Printz Honor Book Grasshopper Jungle. He lives in a remote area in the mountains of Southern California with his family, two horses, two dogs, and three cats. He doesn’t watch television, and occupies himself by writing, bumping into things outdoors, and taking ten-mile runs on snowy trails. Visit him online at AuthorAndrewSmith.com.

Andrew Smith is the author of several novels for young adults, including Winger, Stand-Off, 100 Sideways Miles, and the Michael L. Printz Honor Book Grasshopper Jungle. He lives in a remote area in the mountains of Southern California with his family, two horses, two dogs, and three cats. He doesn’t watch television, and occupies himself by writing, bumping into things outdoors, and taking ten-mile runs on snowy trails. Visit him online at AuthorAndrewSmith.com.

Read an Excerpt

Exile from Eden

I am my father’s son.

If there is one thing he gave me, it is this: Like my father, I have an endless fascination with putting things together.

One time—this happened about two months ago—he brought home a kind of puzzle for me. The puzzle had been sealed inside a large colorful box. The box said this on it:

THE VISIBLE MAN

SCIENCE ASSEMBLY PROJECT

After I put the puzzle together, I decided to name my visible man science assembly project Breakfast.

My grandmother, whose name is Wendy, was unhappy with the way I’d put together Breakfast, my visible man science assembly project.

Wendy was always so regimented and constrained.

She said, “Why don’t you follow the instructions?”

“You don’t need instructions if you know how to think” was my answer.

I didn’t even bother to consult the image of the visible man that had been printed on the cover of the box Breakfast came in. No matter. He wasn’t much of a man—visible or otherwise. He was missing some key parts, and anyone could see that, whether you looked at the instructions or not.

My father told me that science frequently regards modesty as being superior to truth.

But Wendy was angry because I’d glued Breakfast’s brain on top of his see-through head, as opposed to inside his skull, which is where anyone—instructions or not—would have naturally concluded a brain belonged. I also painted an extra set of eyes on Breakfast’s brain and affixed his lungs to his shoulders as though they were a pair of chubby pink wings.

Breakfast was arguably ugly, but he was mine.

Also, he infuriated Wendy, my grandmother, who was eternally attached to elaborate lists of rules and protocols.

I might explain the name I’d given my modestly edited visible man science assembly project. Breakfast was a real person, and he was out there somewhere. In many ways, I was obsessed with the idea that one day I would meet the real person named Breakfast. I frequently tried to imagine the feeling of meeting anyone else, especially a young person—a boy, someone like me—which is what my father and I concluded the real Breakfast was. I had never seen another human being—visible or otherwise—besides the people I’d lived with for my entire life.

Think about that!

Because it had been my understanding that everything people had decided for themselves to be real—and this was supported by accounts, without end, in stories, books (true and otherwise), paintings, and music—had all been a result of stitching together the collected experiences and emotions of the people around them, even if they were lies. And among the many things my father had brought home to me over the last few months was an odd assortment of artifacts he’d used in compiling a presumed history of this boy who was named Breakfast.

Father called these artifacts our Breakfast Papers, and, like me, Father wanted to find this person, if for no other reason than to validate Breakfast’s existence and to put to the test our assumptions about the boy’s life.

Maybe it was just a game—something my father made up to keep me entertained. Who knows?

Perhaps none of it was real, but, like the visible man science assembly project I named Breakfast, putting things together was something my father and I were both driven to do.

• • •

We lived inside a hole.

Naturally, I had nothing to compare our hole to. I had only on one occasion been anywhere else that wasn’t within very short walking—or sprinting—distance from the hole. But growing up here, and hearing the others talk about our hole as they did, I pieced together a picture that it was pretty nice and concluded that we were all very lucky, which is what my father liked to call me: Lucky.

Robby, my other dad, called me Arek, which is my real name.

So, after sixteen years and some days, I crawled up from our hole in the snow-covered ground. I was like one of those bugs—a cicada, which I have only seen in books from our library.

The books tell me that cicadas live for about seventeen years underground, and then, after they come up, they only live another month or so. Knowing that the upstairs part of their lives will only last a few weeks is probably what keeps them underground so long. In any event, it was not my intent that Mel and I would expire in a matter of weeks, but what can you do?

I grew up with Mel. She’s the only other person I know who’s basically been a human cicada. Mel and I were born in the hole. I also had powerful, unexplainable feelings about her—feelings that caused a sensation like something was growing inside my rib cage, trying to crawl out of me, like the plastic parts inside Breakfast, every time I even thought about her. Like now. But I would never have told Mel about that.

It would have been too weird.

I asked my father about the way Mel made me feel, how sometimes I couldn’t sleep thinking about her. It was times like these, when we would talk—especially about things that happen to boys when they are fifteen or sixteen—that my father’s eyes would turn into different kinds of eyes (I can’t explain this, having no context), and he would tell me about BEFORE THE HOLE and AFTER THE HOLE as though some clear demarcation existed, but it was invisible to me. I could only see the after.

My father could straddle time.

Near this place where we live there are three holes in the ground, surrounded by an immense accumulation of other artifacts from which I have constructed an understanding of the way things were before we got here. Before the hole.

The holes are in a field, flat and wide, located about two thousand steps from a house whose roof, according to my father’s account, had been sheared away by a tornado that struck just months after I was born. My father says the house is “historic,” but he says that about everything, without end.

He is probably right.

Everything is historic when you think about it—even things nobody would ever care about.

I ate pancakes this morning.

My socks tend to get dirty on the bottom, on account of the fact that I rarely wear shoes inside our hole.

My hair is the color of pale tea—just like my mother’s.

And the three holes look like this:



I have two fathers, one mother, and a grandmother.

I only pretend to remember who Johnny and Ingrid were—based on the things my family told me about them. I can’t remember a thing about Johnny and Ingrid, but sometimes, when I think about the holes, I make up my own stories about them.

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/01/2019

Smith follows his Printz Honor book Grasshopper Jungle with this rewarding novel that takes place 16 years later, when Arek Szerba, 16, goes in search of his missing fathers, Austin and Robby. Arek, along with Robby’s 15-year-old sister, Amelia (“Mel”) Sing Brees, has lived his whole life in “the hole,” an extensive underground bunker where they are safe from the nine-foot-tall Unstoppable Soldiers roaming above. The mutant mantises have eaten most of humankind, so when Austin and Robby fail to return from one of their habitual forays outside, Arek takes to the road to find them, secretly accompanied by Mel. Episodes of Arek’s earlier years in the hole are interwoven with the pair’s journey across the U.S. and the travelogue of 12-year-old Breakfast and his silent companion, Olive. Philosophical passages and reflections on the paintings of Max Beckmann mix with Arek’s longings for Mel and concerns about masturbation and the threat of circumcision by his hyper-religious grandmother. The combination of the base and off-the-wall with the deeply thoughtful gives this singular offering the air of a classic bildungsroman with a modern twist. Ages 14–up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

07/19/2019

Gr 10 Up-Smith outweirds himself with this postapocalyptic sequel to Grasshopper Jungle. Sixteen years after the Unstoppable Soldiers infested the United States, Austin and Shann's biological son, Arek, is now a teenager. Raised by two dads (who are married), a mom, and a grandma, Arek's life in their underground refuge, Eden, is uniquely curated. Yet Arek longs to follow his many questions outside the "hole" for answers. When his fathers set off to find someone named Breakfast, Arek trails behind them. Mel, his teenage aunt-in-law and love interest, tags along. Chapters rotate between Arek's first-person and Breakfast's third-person narration, as the characters eventually meet. More dangers than just the Unstoppable Soldiers await them out in the open. Will they survive? Smith stays true to the bizarre spirit of the first book while focusing on entirely new characters with equally strong voices. Echoing Austin's preoccupation with history in Grasshopper Jungle, Arek peddles in stories in a quest toward truth: "All stories are true the moment they are told." Naked and wild, 12-year-old Breakfast is the uninhibited new society's poster child. The small cast results in richly drawn, characterlike settings. Unfortunately, female characters remain poorly developed. For fans of the queerness of its predecessor, the pervasiveness of heteronormativity—even in an uninhibited society—may leave a disappointing taste. Nonetheless, Smith's meditation on sexuality and identity is an effective reach for meaning and belonging in an empty, dystopian United States. VERDICT Memorable, odd, and invigorating. A first purchase for teen collections.-Alec Chunn, Eugene Public Library, OR

School Library Journal

2019-06-23
A grotesque, post-apocalyptic exploration of story, reality, and adolescent boyhood.

Sixteen years after the end of Grasshopper Jungle (2014), when the Midwest was decimated by an apocalypse of 10-foot praying mantises, a handful of survivors are living in an underground bunker in Iowa. Sixteen-year-old Arek, born in the bunker, is increasingly feeling stifled, particularly by his grandmother, the "SPEAKER OF LAWS in the hole," and his mother, whose "sadness and anger became a stormy ocean inside the hole, drowning me." He's in love with and lusts after his only peer, biracial (Chinese/white) Amelie Sing Brees. When his fathers, Austin and Robby, venture aboveground and don't return, Arek is determined to seize the moment to explore the wider world and discover what has happened. Arek's first-person narrative is an intentionally crafted meditation on art, truth, reality, reproduction (both abstract and biological), and meaning-making. The only brown character falls into disturbingly racist tropes: a 12-year-old boy named Breakfast who is "completely wild," constantly "scratch[ing] his balls," obsessed with money, hates wearing clothes, and has "wild dreadlocks." Breakfast's companion is a chimpanzee named Olive, whom Breakfast is convinced is just a very hairy human girl who never talks. Smith's (The Size of the Truth, 2019, etc.) trademark portrayal of women characters, which at its most generous can be described as a lack of attention, continues here.

"I am my father's son," the protagonist notes early on; this couldn't be truer—for better and, quite arguably, for worse. (Science fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews