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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Since motherhood is a kind of body horror, it goes well with an apocalypse setting. This spare weird novel reminded me of Jenny Offill's Dept.of Speculation and Weather. One of the blurbs compares it to The Road. The big difference? That all the characters, including the women, are complex humans.
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The End We Start From arrived at my door and before day was over I had read the book. It is a small volume, sparsely worded, but thick with meaning.
Megan Hunter's first novel can be read as an homage to motherhood. Pregnancy and a child's growth and the bonds of baby and child are vivid and visceral, honest and truthful. I knew this journey.
"Pregnancy was the great adventure." The End We Start From
It is a dystopian story of a climate catastrophe causing mass migration, refugees seeking safety. Soon after the birth of their baby, a family flees rising flood waters that are overwhelming London. The father takes them north. As panic and disorder follows, the family retreat further from civilization. They find shelter in a refugee camp. They become separated
There is a layer of symbolic meaning. The title, The End We Start From, comes from lines in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. It is my favorite Eliot poem.
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
The story is told in a few short sentences grouped together and separated by asterisks, as if we hear the mother's spoken thoughts. Interspersed are italicized sentences, seeming quotations, that relate snippets of creation stories. Many readers will recognize the Judeo-Christian references to the Creation of the World, Adam and Eve, and Noah and the Flood.
Universal archetypes appear: references to world Creation Myths of emergence from water or a world egg, the symbolism of womb and a child's birth, the creation of land and mankind, myths of paradise.
The structure of the novel may confuse some readers who prefer a strong narrative or character-driven story. But, if they give the novel a chance, these readers can relate to the story of a mother's love and the joys and concerns of motherhood.
The need to leave home for safety is, sadly, also too universal. Just consider the recent hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires.
And, Hunter has another message for us: When our lives seem to be torn asunder, and we have lost everything, there comes a child taking its first step. We know what we have lost. This child only will know the world as it is. The child is a new beginning.
Life is not linear, going from worse to better. Life is nothing but endings and starting over. We lose a loved one, a career, a home, mobility.
A child is born. Flood waters arose and covered London. People flee and gather to survive. The child grows. The waters recede. The people return. Nothing is the same. Life goes on.
I truly believe that Earth is changing and humans will suffer. Local climate changes will mean some crops fail and other will thrive, new species will move in and other will move out. Humans will migrate. There will be social, political, and economic stress. There will be violence and disorder. There will be an ending to the time we have flourished in, this interglacial period. There will be a new beginning, one born in violence of the death of all we have known. Somewhere, a baby will take it's first step into it's mother's arms.
It is the end we start from.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley and an ARC through Goodreads giveaway in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Megan Hunter's first novel can be read as an homage to motherhood. Pregnancy and a child's growth and the bonds of baby and child are vivid and visceral, honest and truthful. I knew this journey.
"Pregnancy was the great adventure." The End We Start From
It is a dystopian story of a climate catastrophe causing mass migration, refugees seeking safety. Soon after the birth of their baby, a family flees rising flood waters that are overwhelming London. The father takes them north. As panic and disorder follows, the family retreat further from civilization. They find shelter in a refugee camp. They become separated
There is a layer of symbolic meaning. The title, The End We Start From, comes from lines in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. It is my favorite Eliot poem.
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
The story is told in a few short sentences grouped together and separated by asterisks, as if we hear the mother's spoken thoughts. Interspersed are italicized sentences, seeming quotations, that relate snippets of creation stories. Many readers will recognize the Judeo-Christian references to the Creation of the World, Adam and Eve, and Noah and the Flood.
Universal archetypes appear: references to world Creation Myths of emergence from water or a world egg, the symbolism of womb and a child's birth, the creation of land and mankind, myths of paradise.
The structure of the novel may confuse some readers who prefer a strong narrative or character-driven story. But, if they give the novel a chance, these readers can relate to the story of a mother's love and the joys and concerns of motherhood.
The need to leave home for safety is, sadly, also too universal. Just consider the recent hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires.
And, Hunter has another message for us: When our lives seem to be torn asunder, and we have lost everything, there comes a child taking its first step. We know what we have lost. This child only will know the world as it is. The child is a new beginning.
Life is not linear, going from worse to better. Life is nothing but endings and starting over. We lose a loved one, a career, a home, mobility.
A child is born. Flood waters arose and covered London. People flee and gather to survive. The child grows. The waters recede. The people return. Nothing is the same. Life goes on.
I truly believe that Earth is changing and humans will suffer. Local climate changes will mean some crops fail and other will thrive, new species will move in and other will move out. Humans will migrate. There will be social, political, and economic stress. There will be violence and disorder. There will be an ending to the time we have flourished in, this interglacial period. There will be a new beginning, one born in violence of the death of all we have known. Somewhere, a baby will take it's first step into it's mother's arms.
It is the end we start from.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley and an ARC through Goodreads giveaway in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
I’m not even sure how to review this book… I’m also going on the assumption that it’s supposed to be ‘clever’
It certainly had… words in it, and yet I’m not entirely sure that when put together they created any real kind of story. It was definitely one of those books where the reader is left to fill in a lot of the gaps however, it’s almost to the point where there’s not enough story to start those conversations.
It certainly had… words in it, and yet I’m not entirely sure that when put together they created any real kind of story. It was definitely one of those books where the reader is left to fill in a lot of the gaps however, it’s almost to the point where there’s not enough story to start those conversations.
challenging
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
Beautifully written. The spareness generates a dreamy, poetic atmosphere, and the language is stellar. But there is just something odd about taking a narrative about environmental disaster and displacement--which are affecting real people in real time, this very day--and stripping out so much materiality and context, reassigning the story to a nameless, assumedly white, middle class woman and shrinking the whole ordeal to a scope so fragmented and subjective, it's a though you're reading about wandering, faceless spirits rather than human beings. The sense of genuine danger that would be ever-present in a displacement situation is pointedly muted. Like the author was worried that any kind of concrete tension would feel too Hollywood. In the end, I just wanted the world of the story to be a little more convincing.
dark
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Wow. Stunning. Lyrical and sparse.
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
I read this in nearly one sitting - short book but also the sparse prose and poetic tone and theme captured me. I found it really made my gut twist as the premise feels more and more possible, and the vagueness seemed very appropriate for clearly traumatic unexplainable events
How, with so few descriptions and without even giving us the names of the characters, Megan Hunter captured me so intensely I'm not sure I will ever understand. She truly makes every word count.