We All Looked Up – Tommy Wallach

So, imagine that you bumbling along at school, you are the brainy high achiever, or the star sportsman, or the outcast girl who is having some problems at home – and then one day you hear on the news that there is an asteroid destined to hit earth in a couple of months and the entire human race will be wiped out, or maybe just North America. Pretty mind blowing right? Well, this is the premise of this book. It takes a group of students who are all playing their identifying roles at school and throws an asteroid at them – literally!
The clever thing about this book is that it makes you question – what would you do if you only had two months to live? Who would you want to be close too? Is life too short to worry about what other people think of you? It tells you that you shouldn’t just settle into your stereotype and sit there – shake it up a bit! All they way through the book the tension is heightened by the fact that no one makes allowances for what will happen if it doesn’t actually hit earth and destroy everything, they all just make the decision to live each day at a time.
My favourite character was Anita – the brainy high achiever whose parents are expecting her to work really hard and they get in to a top notch university. She just goes feral – life’s too short to spend it trying to fulfil your parents expectations of you, what about your expectations for yourself? The way in which the book is written really gives you a sense of impending doom but also of not wasting life’s opportunities. Peter is still in love with a girl that he was friends with at primary school, but because he is the school’s star sportsman he feels that he needs to date the shallow cheerleader, even though she seems to be dating him for status as well. You’ll be cheering (do you see what I did there?!) him on when he finally decides to do something about it.
Read this book, you will enjoy it. But also really think about how it makes you feel. Are you playing at being someone or are you being yourself – in the end that is what this book is asking you. Are you making yourself happy or are you living to make other people happy. Find your role in life – everyone’s got one…