Reviews - The End We Start From

1.29k reviews for:

The End We Start From

Megan Hunter

3.4 AVERAGE

reads_hard_for_the_money's review against another edition

2.5

challenging dark reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

ncrawford's review against another edition

5.0

This work is wonderful and something to aspire to. Spareness down to an up-close art, the gaps almost making it aphoristic, this experience of the end breezes the reader right through. Our current age is very focused on what we need to see, what we have to turn away from, and EWSF has that unseeing as a living thing inside the text. Wondeful.

The book brings to stunning life the link between mother and newborn child. New life as a theme can turn pretty rote in apocalypse stories, and it's not at all the case here. The child brings the protagonist forward through the impossible, and the strange wonder of newborn life really pairs nicely with the strange wonder of a drowned world. I'm reading this about to have my second child and it's the perfect book for right now.

What EWSF does with violence (which is all left in lacuna) is deep and profound. It's not an incredibly violent or even danger-filled book, which is good for what it's doing. There's something it does, though, that is very much worth reflecting on and hanging onto after the reading.

I do find dissonance in the myth fragments and the book's conclusion--I'm fine with it but would like to have seen what's there go in a different direction. The text is so very rich, and these things weigh it down for me, just a bit like the confession of Claudius in Hamlet.

This is a book everyone should read and writing that people should strive after.

alienstory's review against another edition

3.0

challenging dark mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

mehsi's review against another edition

I am not going to rate this one. I just don't have a clue what to rate it. On the one hand this book was terrible, on the other hand it was intriguing. On one side it was boring and I at times felt myself just falling asleep, on the other side I was hoping that our MC would be all right and would be reunited with her weird husband (who the hell just leaves his wife and baby alone in a camp?).
The way the book was written also definitely didn't help + the way that time continued... It was just a bit too confusing.
Plus really, was it needed to go into so much details of the kid's poop? Ewww.
I am also not sure I would recommend it.