I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley.

I definitely have mixed feelings about this one. There were parts of it I liked and parts of it that I thought were super weird and didn’t really work. I’m hit or miss with Charles Yu, but I can definitely say that he always comes up with some cool ideas.

In a future when humans have long since left earth for other planets, an uninhabitable Earth has been reduced to a shut down theme park showcasing human civilisations, and a gift shop that still struggles to stay afloat. In the off-season, a girl minding the gift shop is the sole human on earth. At least until a couple of people show up, wanting to see inside the theme park.

This is an interesting and inventive short story, with a bit to say about the civilisations that led to the downfall portrayed here.

Thank you so much for allowing me to read and review your titles.
I do appreciate it and continue to review books that I get the chance to read.
Thanks again!

Earth has been abandoned, the only person there is a young girl working in a gift shop for tourists. The shop sells memorabilia of a long gone America, riddled by consumerism (more about this in the amusement park).
The parts of the novella seem to be disjointed, more of a set-up for a longer novel.

Charles Yu is a very talented writer. The concept of this story is different and refreshing. I wished this piece was longer, Would definitely be reading more works of Charles Yu.


Thank you to Scribd and Charles Yu for this ARC.

Unfortunately, this was pretty unreadable for me. A formatting error caused any words containing "ft" to come up blank. I guess I'll try again once it's published and readable. I know arcs usually have some errors, but this was the most errors I've seen yet.

I knew reading from other reviews that it was going to be a short story, but I wasn’t expecting it to be as short as it was. It’s like 40 pages at most, and that was honestly a little disappointing, because it’s really good. I would definitely like to read a much longer version of this. It has a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sort of feel to it, and was super fun. I was excited to read it because I had heard the author’s other work was great, and he lived up to the hype. I’m looking forward to reading more from him for sure.

The length is a bit odd to me - I think it should have only been a short story basically setting up Part IV (America: The Ride). That portion of the novella honestly hit me so hard in the feels as a parent I almost couldn't breathe. The whole extended metaphor was extremely poignant and well-done. The Jane parts felt like a different story in the same universe (one I want to hear...but preferably in a full novel form).

This is a short story about an imaginary world in which the main protagonist goes to earth, which it that world is an adventure land. The writing is as engaging as Charles Yu's previous books, which makes it highly readable while still exploring interesting topics about family and our origins.

[Gifted]
A short novella about a far-future Earth that's been abandoned by humanity, and now serves as simply a theme park. This had the most amazing world-building, and I wanted to explore this world utterly - but it's so short that there's nothing really beyond that world-building set-up. There was no real plot, it was just an introduction to the world of the future. A pessimistic look at the effects of climate change, that still manages to be uplifting.

What an unexpected treat this story was. A collection of 4 short stories, it tells the story of earth (the gift shop) 1000 years in the future. Having become uninhabitable due to human activity, it’s been reduced to a gift shop/former theme park for tourists to visit (or say they visited). The stories all provide a clever commentary on how we as humans are allowing our lives to be loved for us, dictated by consumerism and what the powers that be want you to see and know. And even worse, these things are not a secret, but we as humans are ok with this ignorance. America: The Ride was a particular delight, highlighting the way that we don’t pay attention to our lives slipping by us until it’s too late. Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for this amazing story!

“The Only Living Girl on Earth” is a novella (maybe novelette?) by Charles Yu about a young girl named Jane who runs a gift shop on Earth, which was long ago abandoned, leaving her the titular girl of the title. Jane’s dad is out of the picture, her mom works on the Moon, and it’s the off-season so no tourists are around. But her isolation is broken when a father and son set their rocket down nearby and have to wait a few days for repairs. The son wanders into the broken down and thus dangerous amusement park (Earth: A Theme Park) next door, leaving Jane and the father to go look for him.

Earth went through a rough patch, starting eons ago when, “geoengineering got out of whack. Which made the oceans crazy hot . . . Followed by the terrestrial food web also collapsing.” Some, “a lucky few,” escaped by colonizing other planets, and eventually most people lived on the colonies rather than Earth, though people started to come back for vacations and field trips. As Wu runs through those years, followed by Earth’s attempts to cater to the returnees (Earth: The Museum, Earth the Gi Shop, etc.), he packs in a lot of social, environmental, and economic criticism, particularly consumerism.

Jane’s story is interrupted by a middle section from a plural we point-of-view that is seemingly taking the "America: The Ride” trip in the theme park. I say seemingly due to the surreal nature of the experience, which leaves things a bit up in the air. The ride serves as a metaphor, and though I wished it was at times less blunt, there is still a poignancy here that moves the reader, particularly towards the end. The language also turns more lyrical in this section.

When we return to Jane’s search for the boy, the lyricism falls away, but Yu still is playing with layers of meaning here. Again, I would have preferred them less pointed, as concepts are sometimes clearly (perhaps too clearly) delivered via dialogue or internal monologue, as when Jane at one point thinks: “No one needs help with illusion. People are plenty good at it.” I won’t give away the context of this, save to say that what Jane is observing pretty much makes the same point without her monologue, which goes on to expand on the point for another page or page and a half.

The story, overall, left me a bit disappointed to be honest. I like the ideas behind it, but the execution struck me as too pat, and I felt I was seeing too much of the internal structure — the wiring and I-beams etc. behind the walls. It’s a solid story, certainly, and as noted, despite my general disappointment, I was moved at points. But I think I would have preferred either a lot less (maybe just the ride itself as a story) or a lot more. It’s tough to get that novella balance right, and I’m not sure Yu does that here, despite some fine writing.

This was a fun quick novella by Charles Yu focusing on a teenage girl about to go off to college, the gift shop she runs in the ruins of Earth: The Museum, and the cusp of her life she’s on (getting ready to go to college, deciding whether or not to be done with waiting for her dad to come back). There’s also a brief chapter describing America: the Ride that feels like it might have been from another story, or like the overall book may once have been a longer book. It’s not that it doesn’t fit period, it just feels slightly out of place. There’s an eerie sort of nostalgia to the whole story, and as a snapshot of sorts, it’s a sweet, slightly sad story. Find it when it comes out.

This novella length book consists of three fragments/inter-related stories. In each we are with Jane, from the Earth Gift Shop, which is all that remains of an ecologically decimated Earth. The tales are pointed and rueful, and would come across as fairly heavyhanded but for the author's playful and wryly deadpan approach. Tourists visit empty and destroyed Earth mostly to see where it all began and to be able to say, when they return home to their planets and colonies, that they have been there.

In the first story we look at the souvenirs available in the gift shop. The second story follows a family as it takes a Disney-style ride through an Earth history amusement. The final story is a visit to the abandoned Earth Theme Park. The stories are stylistically different, but linked, and the metaphorical weight varies in each. All three, though, are entertaining and thought provoking. The Disney ride in particular is both brutally apt and heartbreaking.

More to the point, Yu can offer the reader more insight, social and cultural commentary, and subtle humor in a single short story than most of his contemporaries can stuff into a 400 page doorstop book; that alone makes this an excellent find.