海角大神

Maile Meloy doesn鈥檛 waste a second before subverting the title of her gripping new novel, Do Not Become Alarmed. Catastrophe is the subject of a pair of foreboding epigrams, and that鈥檚 before you鈥檝e even reached the first page. Then there鈥檚 the setting for the story, a luxurious Christmas cruise. Think about it 鈥� what鈥檚 the last bit of good news you heard coming from the public exploits of a cruise line?

Exactly.

So here we are, boarding the ship with two young families. Liv and Nora are cousins in their thirties, and they鈥檙e also close friends. To help Nora get through the first holiday season after her mother鈥檚 death, Liv has suggested that the two families take a joint vacation. Together with their husbands and four young children, the women trade the bubble of their well-heeled lives in Los Angeles for the even more sheltered cocoon of the ship.

They鈥檙e headed south from L.A., down the western coast of the Americas for two weeks. A U-turn at the mechanical marvels of the Panama Canal is a sweetener for Liv鈥檚 husband, an engineer. The truth is, a cruise isn鈥檛 the first choice of vacation for any of the adults, who feel themselves too self-aware to be able to enjoy the artifice of shipboard life. But soon enough they鈥檙e seduced.

Take the endless buffet that instantly erases the burden of daily meal planning:

"Watching them eat, Liv felt her mind relax, easing its calculation. Feeding children, even when you had all available resources, took so much planning and forethought. The low-grade anxiety about the next meal started when you were cleaning up the last. But for two weeks there would never be any question about what was for dinner, or lunch, or snack. That roving hunter-gatherer part of her brain, which sucked a lot of power and made the other lights dim, she could just turn it off."

The spell of seaborne luxury is cast, and the sailing is, well, smooth. The Kids Club, an oasis of perpetual amusements overseen by a jolly and competent staff, sets the adults free to laze and lounge and nap. And a friendship with a sophisticated Argentinian couple and their two glamorous teenagers gives the excursion a gloss of worldliness. Maybe self-aware skepticism is overrated?

But as Meloy reels you into the story with her cool and fluid prose, she clearly signals that yes, you should absolutely 鈥� and perhaps even perpetually 鈥� be more than a little alarmed.

The first hint is when two of the six children briefly go missing aboard ship. Add in Liv鈥檚 first-world tendency to see peril in almost anything 鈥� sharks and riptides on a proposed surfing lesson, the risk of a bus crash on a trip to a hummingbird sanctuary, the kids getting hooked on caffeine on a tour of a coffee plantation 鈥� and you can feel the karmic comeuppance on the horizon.

When it arrives, it鈥檚 a doozy. While at port in an unnamed country that sounds a lot like Costa Rica, the three dads go golfing. The moms, all six kids in tow, decide on a zip-line tour of the rain forest. 鈥淭his is a good country for us to go ashore in,鈥� Liv says. 鈥淭hey call it the Switzerland of Latin America.鈥�

But things don鈥檛 go as planned, and the isolated beach they wind up on proves a gateway to crisis: In an instant, all six children go missing. Aged six to fourteen, they鈥檙e defined by their vulnerabilities. Diabetes, Asperger鈥檚, pre-teen brattiness, teenage beauty 鈥� each faces a particular kind of danger.

With the kids gone, it鈥檚 not only the now-frantic parents who have to strap in. We readers do as well. In a headlong rush 鈥� a zip-line turns out to be the perfect metaphor for Meloy鈥檚 narrative technique 鈥� cause is followed by outsized effect, and bad timing begets even worse luck.

鈥淚鈥檓 afraid I鈥檝e taught my children to be too good,鈥� Nora says at one point, sure the advice that eased her biracial children through their American lives would now prove their undoing. 鈥淚 wanted to keep them safe. I taught them that they can鈥檛 play with plastic guns, ever. And they can鈥檛 lose their tempers. I wanted them to not draw attention to themselves. I wanted them to be small targets.鈥�

You want Nora to be reassured. But when it comes to the genuine perils of an indifferent world, Meloy pulls no punches. As the story roars to a close, we鈥檙e forced to face just how random life actually is, and how close to a precipice each of us stands.