How to Survive Everything
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Editor’s Pick. Shortlisted for the Bookmark Festival Book of the Year and the McIlvanney Prize
"I wasn’t sure there could be a great pandemic novel. Here it is." Ian Rankin
My name is Haley Cooper Crowe and I am in lockdown in a remote location I can’t tell you about.
It’s five years after the pandemic, and for most people life has returned to normal—but not for Haley Cooper Crowe and her brother Ben. Children of divorce, they live with their mother, but their dad believes there’s a new, much deadlier virus spreading out of control, and that he can only save his kids by kidnapping them and hiding them in his remote prepper hideaway.
Once confined to their off-grid “safe house”, Haley and Ben are completely cut off from civilisation. Will they make it out alive? How can they save their mother? How can they discover what’s happening on the outside?
Propulsive, electrifying, tense, and often visceral and funny, How to Survive Everything is one teenage girl’s guide to navigating the imminent collapse of her world, family and sanity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Haley Cooper Crowe, the narrator of this outstanding if often disturbing thriller set during a near-future pandemic from Scottish author Morrison (Nina X), and her brother, Ben, who have been living with their mother after their parents' divorce, are kidnapped by their "prepper" father, because he believes a second pandemic is coming. Now in a remote compound, Haley has lived off the grid for so long that she doesn't know her age, but she does know that she was "fifteen years, seven months, two weeks, and one day old" when she was abducted. Can Haley and Ben somehow escape from the compound and reunite with their mother? Haley's voice and comic flair never falter as she successfully transforms her father's rules into her own manual for survival. Morrison succeeds in making readers empathize with Haley even as she admires the "genius" underlying her father's criminal behavior. This elegantly conceived and written novel provides an unforgettable interrogation of whether coming to terms with one's own family always involves a degree of insanity. Morrison is a writer to watch.
