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Book Summary and Reviews of We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

We All Looked Up

by Tommy Wallach

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2015, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Four high school seniors put their hopes, hearts, and humanity on the line as an asteroid hurtles toward Earth in this contemporary novel.

They always say that high school is the best time of your life.

Peter, the star basketball player at his school, is worried "they" might actually be right. Meanwhile Eliza can't wait to escape Seattle - and her reputation - and perfect-on-paper Anita wonders if admission to Princeton is worth the price of abandoning her real dreams. Andy, for his part, doesn't understand all the fuss about college and career— - the future can wait.

Or can it? Because it turns out the future is hurtling through space with the potential to wipe out life on Earth. As these four seniors - along with the rest of the planet - wait to see what damage an asteroid will cause, they must abandon all thoughts of the future and decide how they're going to spend what remains of the present.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Stark scenes alternating between anarchy and police states are counterbalanced by deepening emotional ties and ethical dilemmas, creating a novel that asks far bigger questions than it answers. Ages 14–up." - Publishers Weekly

"[A] literary Breakfast Club for a modern generation, and it will surprise readers expecting another clunky dystopian novel with its solid, realistic writing." - Booklist

"Starred Review. A thought-provoking story that will bring out readers' inner philosophers."- Kirkus

"Tommy Wallach's We All Looked Up is a triumphant debut - this generation's The Stand. It is at once troubling, uplifting, scary, and heart-wrenching, and written with so much compassion for our fragile hold on the fleeting here and now. A glorious, wonderful, completely unforgettable novel." - Andrew Smith, author of Winger, Grasshopper Jungle, and 100 Sideways Miles

This information about We All Looked Up was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Tommy Wallach Author Biography

Photo: Tallie Maughan

Tommy Wallach is a Brooklyn-based musician and novelist. He is the author of Thanks for the Trouble and We All Looked Up, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was optioned for film by Paramount. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in McSweeney's, Tin House, Wired, Salon, and other magazines. As a musician, he has put out an EP with Decca Records, as well as two independent releases, including We All Looked Up: The Album, a companion record to his first novel. He is a recent MacDowell Fellow.

Link to Tommy Wallach's Website

Name Pronunciation
Tommy Wallach: WAHL-ehk

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