The End We Start From

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter is a descriptive but fragmented story about a dystopian Great Britain overrun by global warming floods. If you are looking for an apocalyptic type story dense with action, this is not it. Instead, The End We Start From is an exploration of motherhood that keeps the reader at arm's length.

The story is about a group of characters, all given a letter instead of a name. The husband R and wife give birth to a baby named Z. As the floodwaters begin to rise, the scramble for shelter and flee to Scotland. Z eventually becomes ill and ends up in a hospital. R leaves due to... reasons, and the story is told during Z's first year. It is quite the contrast of early motherhood woes and childhood milestones juxtaposed against the terror of unstoppable world events.

“We are told not to panic, the most panic-inducing instruction known to man.”

Both nature and the nurturing of a child stops for no one. Time and life must go on even in the direst of circumstances. However, the distance that the author puts between the reader and the writing didn't allow me to connect my own experiences of motherhood with that of the mother. I wanted to empathize with the characters, but aside from well-written language and dialog, the story fell ultimately flat.

Events are vaguely described, often to the point that I felt like I was watching a school film about devastation or war for educational purposes rather than living the character's life. I am not sure I understand the unusual choice of not giving the character's full names. If the author intended to create even more distance between the characters and the readers, it was effective. I remained a passive observer throughout the novel.

“When I was a child, my mother told me she would die for me, of course. I asked her all the time. Tested her.”

However, on a more positive note, while the language and dialog are sparse, it is compelling and well thought out. The End We Start From has a poetic feel to it; instead of reading a short story about a flooded Britain, we read about a dystopia in verse. It is highly stylized language; some of it is brilliant, “The water rose and rose, and they could not recognize each other in the torrent, in the endless rain from above.”

In the end, this will be an extremely polarizing book. You will either love it or be baffled by it. I am sorry to say that I am in the latter camp. I could not get past the distance and lack of description. However, I recognize that this story will speak to some readers, and I recommend it for readers who want a more experimental story.

3.5

This was awesome. Read it in an hour, could NOT put it down.

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter is more than just an “end of world as we know it” story; it's a story about relationships and strength in an uncertain time. The narrator is a new mother, a nameless woman who manages to remain strong in a world that is chaotic and unstable. She must continue to move forward, with her infant, trying to find a place that is safe and dry.

The narrator uses initials when referring to people she meets along her journey. She loses people she knows, meets new people, builds new relationships, and appears to be more calm than she should be. This is a woman who knows that she must survive for her son, and she must continue to work her way through a world that is changing around her.

I enjoyed the way the author told this story. Ms. Hunter weaves an engaging story, sharing the Narrator's life with us, both in the present as well as the past. The narrator tells the story in a very matter of fact way, she doesn't sugar coat anything and she isn't flowery, she just tells the reader what happened to her as London experiences a major natural disaster. The way Ms. Hunter wrote the narrator, there were times when I felt awful for her, yet, there were other times when I said “You go, girl”, because she has a quiet strength. I enjoyed this story and would definitely read it again.

Reviewer's Note: I received an advanced e-galley of this book from the publisher through the NetGalley website. I did not receive any form of compensation in exchange for my review of this novel.

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley. Opinions are my own.

I can't say much about this book because it's so short, and therefore I'm not sure what's a spoiler. But it's a story about a woman and her baby and how they're surviving in a dystopian type of future. The writing is good and very descriptive at times, but it surprisingly lacks emotional depth. There's also no big, overarching plot points or character descriptors. For example, none of the characters have complete names. They're just referred to as letters - R, Z, O, etc. For the first third of the book, I thought this may be because the author wants the reader to latch onto the emotions of the story, which center around a woman trying to survive with her baby. But without anything of substance to hold onto, the story came off as shallow and underdeveloped. I have a lot of questions that I can't pose here because they may be spoilerly, and the story just fails to answer any of them. After the first third, I thought the book was hitting its stride, and I was really enjoying it. I read the entire thing in two sittings, which is rare for me. But as I was reaching the end, I realized I wasn't going to get any answers, and became annoyed and frustrated. I think this is one you can skip.

These are just my quick thoughts after just completing the book. A more comprehensive review will be coming on my YouTube channel (youtube.com/allisontheresa) and on my blog (allisontheresa7.wordpress.com).

‘'In the darkness demons flew. Their shapes made a fearful noise until a voice called out, and they were still, and the silence was complete.''

When we have read 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale , it is reasonable to believe that it would be rather difficult to be touched by any other dystopian novel. Yet, we may be mistaken. At least, I was. Frightfully. I frankly don't know where to begin with The End We Start From. It shocked me, frightened me, moved me and disturbed me. And as far as I am concerned, it managed to enter my personal Holy Trinity of dystopian novels.

The story starts with a birth, the eternal symbol of life, hope and continuation. An unnamed couple is one of the few remaining parents of a hospital before it's forced to close down. Why?Because terrible floods have been plaguing the land and London has become almost uninhabitable. There is no electric power, no internet, no television, no work and food has become scarce. They abandon their flat in order to find shelter in camps, in areas that are still dry. The odyssey of coping with a new way of life is the heart of the novel.

‘'Our city is here,somewhere, but we are not.''

How does someone find the strength to carry one once everything is lost? Where do we find courage to survive and, perhaps, build our lives again? One of the most powerful motives- if not THE most powerful- is the welfare of our children. The mother, who is our sole eyes and ears in the entire story, finds comfort in the company of other mothers who try to provide for their newborns, and in watching her own son grow day by day. Little Z is blissfully unaware of the situation and discovers the world through his own instinct with his mother's help.One of the ways she implores to keep her sanity is going back, retreating in childhood memories.

‘'Once someone knocked me over. An accident, I presumed. He didn't look back.''

Humanity lies at the heart of the story. Why does she say ‘'presumed'' to refer to a past incident? An accident we all have faced, especially when commuting daily. Is the spreading of inhumanity and personal isolation one of the signs and causes of disaster? Perhaps we need to face a universal catastrophe in order to realise how wrong we have been, how imprisoned in our microcosm? The mother doesn't answer her own questions, she contemplates, tries to find something that could possible make sense and hold on until a new day dawns.

To talk about themes, characters and language in this book seems to me dry and completely unnecessary. There is no dialogue, only short sentences that reminded me of the best examples of existential poetry. And yet, in two short paragraphs there is more character development than we meet in whole chapters in other books. The mother's voice is completely humane, sometimes desperate,most of the times calm and acute.

The story of Noah from the Old Testament, the Greek myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha are constantly used in the narration. Most civilizations have their own myth of the Flood as a punishment for the avarice of men. Perhaps, mankind has been afraid of the power of water since the beginning of Time, perhaps we've known the damage we cause to everything that was given to us. There are also many references to myths of the Creation from many different cultures.

I don't think that anyone who is going to read this novel will manage to remain indifferent. It is a beautiful book, with a moving, profound and hopeful conclusion. A breath of fresh air in the zombie-filled, tortured and abused Dystopian Genre, a novel that we're going to discuss for years to come...

ARC kindly provided by Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an honest review.