NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO PANIC by Kevin Wilson

Two bored, awkward teenagers pool their writing and artistic talents to create a poster with a cryptic message and mysterious drawings.  Then they clandestinely plaster hundreds of copies all over their small Tennessee town.  Twenty years later a journalist finds out who was responsible.  That’s the whole plot in a nutshell, and it’s just not enough to carry an entire novel.  Frankie, who comes up with the words on the poster, which become sort of a mantra for her, considers her and Zeke’s summer stunt to be the most important event in her life.  The mystery of who caused the “Coalfield Panic of 1996” is heightened by the fact that Frankie and Zeke are such unlikely candidates. The town’s residents attribute the poster’s words to various sources, such as the Bible, a rock song’s lyrics, a satanic incantation, a mini-manifesto, or some obscure passage from a famous author.  I really enjoyed Kevin Wilson’s Perfect Little World and Nothing to See Here, but this novel just seemed a little thin to me.  I kept expecting something monumental to happen, but it never did, although a few people who are not even characters in the novel reach a tragic end due to the town’s obsession with the posters, leading to some guilty feelings on the part of the perpetrators.  My favorite character is Frankie’s single mother, who is so unflappable, even when she catches Frankie and Zeke making out on the couch.  She harbors a secret that she reveals to Frankie late in the novel, and my reaction was, “Of course!”  Still, this minor revelation is not nearly enough to save this novel, but I’ll bet most readers can readily recite the two beguiling sentences on the poster by the time they finish the book.