This beautiful little book caught my eye with its stunning cover and colors. The End We Start From ends almost as quickly as it begins. It’s brief but lovely and rich. I adore when writers know how to skillfully say lots with little. Megan Hunter has done just that.
In a very timely apocalyptic scenario, London (and perhaps much of the UK) is flooded by rising seawaters, displacing millions and disrupting the normal life of the developed world into a struggle for survival. For me the terrifying undercurrent beneath the surface story is the speculative reality that could easily ensue in our own world. Hunter seems to call out our complacency for these types of stories and warnings: “How easily we have got used to it all, as though we knew what was coming all along” (68). Yet while there is an undertone of warning for us all, the story itself is not preachy. Nor does it look for answers to whatever may have caused the waters to rise. Instead it portrays the human condition that longs to persevere and remain.
The novel is eerily quiet, and it is the gaps between the paragraphs that seem to be filled with panic and worry — working towards diluting the individual characters into sketches that are more reminiscent of memories. The narrator shares with us that she used to take minutes at her job and it is halfway through the novel that we learn she is writing this account: “I want to write about the checkpoint quickly. Get it over with” (68). To me this explains the brevity, which I imagine will be the greatest complaint of many as they read this story. It’s almost as if the waters have washed and faded away all the details in between and left these more calcified details to hold the fragments of the story together.
Character names are simplified to letters, except the narrator who remains nameless. I didn’t quite understand this convention except that perhaps it is to keep everyone opaque enough to possibly be anyone, yet still distinguishable for narrative. There’s something that makes me wonder if there isn’t more to it, though. The narrator’s child is Z, the last letter –the omega– of the English alphabet, and this story is quite like the end times, though children are the promise of a future. There was a character, H, who traveled between an island and the mainland on a boat — if you look at the structure of “H,” it is two lines bridged. H’s wife was F, and they had two children. Looking at the structure of “F,” it has two lines coming off one major line.
I know I’m stretching, but as I said, I feel like perhaps the letters have more meaning than just being identifiers. I think names are important, so it’s interesting to me that they would fall away in this narrative. Because in most survival stories, while living day to day is the main plot, retaining a sense of self and identity also remain. “I do not know where I am … Where doesn’t seem to be the question anymore” (85), writes the narrator. The question seems to transition to what is home and how does identity derive from that?
Overall, I enjoyed this quick read. It is easily read in one sitting and it is accessible enough to want to read quickly. I’m always fascinated with societal decline storylines. I like to feel the suspense and terror observing the decay of our normalcy. The upswing, that is the struggle after the fall, is always less enjoyable for me; however, there’s not much to get bogged down in during The End We Start From. It’s atmospheric and reminiscent of the film adaptation of Children of Men. Hunter has dispensed with writing too much and instead has poetically woven an intricate and impactful story of survival in flashes of memory and tableaus. I look forward to picking this up again someday for a refreshing albeit haunting treat.
Favorite Passages from The End We Start From
It is bad, the news. Bad news as it always was, forever, but worse. More relevant. This is what you don’t want, we realize. What no one ever wanted: for the news to be relevant. (22)
— Good God, I would love to write something this striking and lovely.
We are told not to panic, the most panic-inducing instruction known to man. (60)
Landing. From water to land. From moon to earth … the beach is the in-between place. The world between worlds, a memory from a book read at bedtime. (102)
I left my job behind every day at five, as thy say. I peeled it off like a lining. V never stopped working I wonder what he does now, now that work is frozen in time. One hand held in the air, one leg lifting from the ground. (116)
Reunions come from television … the crush of shoulder against cheek under studio lights. … This is how it really is: seconds of almost nothing, edging readjustment to an old face. (126-127)
