Boomsday Book

Boomsday is the title of a 2007 novel by satirist Christopher Buckley, best known as the author of Thank You for Smoking. It is a hilarious, elaborately plotted cautionary tale centred around Cassandra Devine, a young Washington PR flack whose nightly blog ignites an intergenerational, political battle. It is set in the present, just before the US presidential race gets under way. 

Buckley takes one of the worst fears of Gen Ys (how are we going to pay for the care and feeding of the huge, spoiled Boomer generation in their interminable old age?); he pits it against the primal fears of Boomers (the young will storm our gated communities, drag us into poverty and/or make us into Soylent Green!); and literally spins out an absurd, almost believable, solution to a pre-election budgetary crisis. En route to the satisfying epilogue, we trip over a cast of evil and dotty politicos, a horribly self-involved father, an eccentric senator and a bombastic, evangelical presidential candidate. 

Throughout the novel, Buckley critiques and tracks the role of PR and the media at every stage of power acquisition – from grooming and schmoozing, to information mismanagement; from truths and lies, to national catastrophe. Despite its hyperbolic overtones, there is something uncomfortably true-to-life about this narrative.

I recommend this book as a form of aversion therapy for blogophobes. For everyone else, it’s just good, ironic fun.