The End We Start From
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
**NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JODIE COMER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH, AND WRITTEN BY ALICE BIRCH (NORMAL PEOPLE)**
“The End We Start From by Megan Hunter is a short, concentrated book—a shot of distilled story, like the pulp of a tale boiled to a thick spiced paste. . . . With passages from mythology interspersed with its imagined future, the book is engrossing, compelling and finally hopeful.” —Naomi Alderman, author of The Power
“The End We Start From is a beautifully spare, haunting meditation on the persistence of life after catastrophe. I loved it.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven
Longlisted for the 2018 Aspen Words Literary Prize
Finalist for the Barnes & Noble 2017 Discover Great New Writers Award
An indelible and elemental debut—a lyrical vision of the strangeness and beauty of new motherhood, and a tale of endurance in the face of unimaginable change.
In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family is forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.
This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family's world—of new life and new hope—sings with love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The postapocalyptic literary novel is currently in vogue almost to the point of redundancy, but Hunter's slim yet sharp debut offers a level of precision and interiority rarely seen in the genre. The novel opens with an unnamed narrator giving birth to her first child, known only as Z, just as a mysterious and devastating flood overtakes London. But rather than focus on the specifics of the catastrophe, the story instead becomes an investigation of the tumultuous internal life of a new mother. The scaffolding of the apocalypse narrative hiding out from potential threats while also endlessly searching for supplies, trying to establish normalcy in the face of the unknown as sacrifices and forays into dangerous territory become increasingly necessary serve more as a backdrop to the strangeness of a new human life. The narrator forges relationships with other survivors as she moves from place to place in search of safety and community, but the journey toward recognizing the world for what it has become is made all the more poignant as she begins to see it through the eyes of Z, a child who has never known it to be anything other than what it is now. Told in a voice that is by turns meditative, desperate, and hopeful, this novel showcases Hunter's considerable talents and range.
