Summary

The last collection in her apocalypse series, “These Final Apocalypses” begins with “Bathing,” a story in which a first-person narrator declares, “One thing about after the apocalypse is you can’t get dirt on you” (165). He tells us that “the whole point of the apocalypse was to feel clean. What a load” (165). “Barbarians” follows, in which a first-person narrator tells us, “It was exciting about the economy because the economy deserved it,” and goes on to tell us about feeling “the pats of little kitten feet” and “feeling I was not in it alone” (166).

“Idea” is a four-sentence story, which states “there should be a film starring…a giant piece of paper…[that] you can’t read” (167). “Superpowers” tells the story of a woman jumping off a building, which ends with the narrator wondering, “Don...