There's some initial security in starting to read a short book, in that it's a fairly small time investment. As Bernard Black, King of Booksellers, says when recommending a novel in Black Books, "It's terrible, but mercifully short." The comparative downside was something I discovered when racing through Megan Hunter's perfectly formed The End We Start From - it was all going to be over far too quickly.
Initially I was unsure because, with the exception of McCarthy's The Road which I love, post-apocalyptic or disaster novels aren't so much my jam. I went through a period of reading a lot of vintage end of days novels (things like The Death of Grass and Sea Raiders which are both still very much worth picking up) and fell a little out of love with them as they got to be a little samey. The joy with The End We Start From is that it doesn't feel familiar, it feels very much like something new.The unnamed narrator begins the story giving birth - as floodwaters are rising elsewhere her own waters are breaking, and it is through her and her son Z that the rest of the story unfolds. There are a lot of omissions in the book, the characters are only ever given a single letter as a name, the nature of the disaster never made completely clear, and there is an abruptness and sparsity in the prose that mirrors this. It's a narrow field of vision, but that focuses you onto the beauty in the minutiae, in the tiny ways the narrator's baby changes, in the way she balances her horror at what is happening on one hand and her family on the other.
Despite its short length, there's a long tail on this book, something that I'll be mulling over for a long while. I've more than once found myself flicking back through to look again at a particular line. It also has the benefit of a gorgeous cover, making it a lovely object as well as a truly brilliant book.
Robyn
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