A woman gives her baby to her indentured servant and apologizes--right before jumping to her death from the penthouse balcony--at the start of Marissa Levien's race-against-time-thriller The World Gives Way.
In the near future, a spaceship the size of Switzerland embarks on a proposed 200-year journey in search of a human-friendly planet. The mega-rich can afford lavish living quarters aboard the ship, but the less than affluent can obtain passage only by agreeing to a 50-year worker-servant contract to earn their keep.
Twenty-five-year-old orphan Myrra is contracted to Marcus and Imogene Carlyle, wealthy new parents. A member of the ship's governing board, Marcus has learned that an unfixable crack in the ship's hull will cause the vessel to burst apart in about two months--or it could happen tomorrow if a meteor hits it. Telling the public would ensure mass hysteria. The Carlyles decide not to wait for the inevitable and commit suicide, leaving Myrra on her own with their baby, Charlotte. Myrra empties the wall safe, changes her identity and goes on the run with the infant as the countdown to the end of the world begins. Certain that Myrra killed the Carlyles, the police set off in pursuit.
The fantastical yet plausible plot Levien has created in her debut novel is simultaneously heartbreaking and comical. Myrra knows doom is on the horizon, but her adventures eluding the Keystone Kops necessitates a philosophical and humorous outlook on how to live life before it runs out. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer