WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD

A weak and derivative addition to the flood of books presaging the year 2000. Any number of hucksters, hacks, would-be savants, pissant doomsayers, and weird scribblers have vultured with a vengeance onto this purported dawn of a new epoch. Among them, they have managed to regurgitate almost every possible idea or notion about the millennium, no matter how abstruse. In her own contribution to the melee, Kennedy (Sensual Healing, not reviewed, etc.), uncowed by the competition, demonstrates a flair for the unoriginal. Sticking close to her title's unwieldy agenda, she kicks things off with a shallow survey of past prophetic mutterings about the years 2000/2001, rounding up Nostradamus and the other usual suspects. Then we're off on a tour of the conditions—crime, technology, etc.,—that have caused many to feel so lost and fearful that they are ready to trust in all manner of prophecy and prophets, no matter how absurd. Kennedy wraps things up, warmly and fuzzily, by proclaiming that we are in the midst of a grand religious/spiritual revival that, sham shamanists aside, promises not the apocalypse, but a radiant future in which we eventually regain control of our lives and live in harmony with nature: ``We are `healing' the rift between physical reality and spiritual reality, becoming both individually and collectively more `whole' than was possible when our fears for survival so divided us.'' Similar tiresome cliches and exhausted platitudes are to be found throughout, and are invariably reinforced by Kennedy's graceless style, which is almost completely lacking in such ornamentations as wit and detail. It is almost enough to make an apocalyptic end of the world seem attractive.