Reviews

"Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising, McHugh's second collection confronts near-future life with an ironic and particular eye. Her characters live with zombies, struggle to make ends meet on the Arizona-Mexico border, and cope with China's descent into capitalism in stories that stretch the boundaries of imagination."
--"Publishers Weekly" Top 10 Best of the Year
"Superb.... Against backdrops of sheer terror, Ms. McHugh's characters insist on investing themselves in flirtations, friendships and jobs. They keep their innocent curiosity for the world even as it falls to pieces."
--"Wall Street Journal"
"The stories in After the Apocalypse will catch many readers off-guard; they're suspenseful, but they never quite go where you expect them to. The end of the world as we know it will never be the same again."
--"Salon"
"The best stories in this mesmerizing collection from the L.A. writer are the ones that elude categorization--the struggles of a troubled doll maker in "Useless Things," the fantasies of an impulsive man in "Going to France." It's the ordinary and everyday that we should be afraid of, not the prospect of big explosions and world-ending catastrophes. This is a pro stretching a genre to its limits--subverting, inverting, perverting, disturbing."
--"Los Angeles Magazine"
"McHugh brings a subtle grittiness to the end of days. There is no post-apocalyptic glamour in these post-apocalyptic tales."
--"Cleveland Plain Dealer"
"These nine stories take place in a world that has been ravaged by prion diseases and economic collapse, even as it enters a new age of artificial intelligence and green biotech. You won't be able to forget the people you meet there."
--"io9"
"One of the best short story collections I've read in the last decade."
--Chris Moriarty, "F&SF"
"McHugh's approach to the apocalypse is oblique, a concern with the personal, the individual or family unit, rather than the de