For readers of Leave the World Behind and Exit West, an astonishingly resonant novel that explores the precariousness of Jewish American life through one family after a black hole consumes the State of Israel and similar strange events occur in major cities around the world, ushering in a time of chaos as well as miracles.
When a black hole suddenly consumes Israel and as similar anomalies spread across the globe, a conspiracy takes hold: will the holes swallow the Jews, or will they swallow the earth?
Against a backdrop of antisemitic paranoia, restrictions on Jewish life, and spasms of violence, Ethan and Ella, Jewish citizens of a nameless American city, meet and fall in love. Ella, a photojournalist, documents the changes in daily life, particularly among the city’s Jewish residents. Some Jews, feeling inexplicably drawn to the unusual events, go underground to an abandoned subway system that seems to connect the entire world. Others leave for the south, forming militias and stockpiling weapons. But most, like Ethan, Ella, and her young son Michael, stay and try to make their way amid the hostility and small joys of the ever-changing landscape.
But then thousands of commercial planes are sucked from the sky. Air travel stops. Borders close. Refugees pour into the capital. Eventually all Jews in the city are forced to relocate to the Pale, an area sandwiched between a park and a river. There, under the watchful eye of border guards, drones, and robotic dogs, they form a fragile new society.
Suspenseful, thought-provoking, and brilliantly conceived, Next Stop is an enthralling novel that explores the fault lines between our collective, national, and individual memories and how our deepest bonds can be unexpectedly reshaped in moments of crisis.
Industry Reviews
“A striking debut. . . Resnick skillfully uses the raw materials of postapocalyptic fiction and speaks lucidly to his Jewish characters’ legacy of displacement. This timely tale will appeal to fans of speculative fantasies by Michael Chabon and Lavie Tidhar.” —Publishers Weekly
“Resnick’s prose is lucid and moves at a steady clip, never dwelling anywhere too long, avoiding the kind of teeth-gnashing misery one might expect in a novel about persecution and ethnic cleansing. For all its futuristic terrors, this is really a story about a family.” —Jewish Book Council
"Uncanny, riveting, and strangely prescient, Next Stop is that rarest of narratives: a glimpse into an unthinkable past, present, and future all at once. Only a magician or a mystic could pull off such a thing." —Elisa Albert, author of Human Blues
"Next Stop is either prophetic—with its depiction of flailing morality, administrative cowardice, and fact-resistant discourse—or it is timeless, in that there is really no moment Benjamin Resnick couldn't have written the book. I'm reminded of both Bernard Malamud's God's Grace and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven—it's that feeling of gently and easily reading something of crushing horror. What you will find here is what we all hope to find as readers: a good story about people up against the odds; people who are, ultimately, us." —Derek B. Miller, author of The Curse of Pietro Houdini
"With the whimsy of Salinger, the humor of Vonnegut, and more than a little of the prophetic weirdness of Kafka, Next Stop is the rarest of gems: a novel made up of equal parts human intimacy and broad foresight. Benjamin Resnick's debut is a clarion call, a profound cosmic joke, a canary in the global coalmine, and a disconcerting work of art." —Daniel Torday, author of The Last Flight of Poxl West
“It is a brave and troubling novel. Using elements from apocalyptic fiction like Station Eleven, Resnick was influenced by the great Jewish writers and has made use of the legacy of displacement in an extremely chilling read.” —Melanie Fleishman, Center for Fiction
