I was intrigued to read The End We Start From once I saw the cover and read the blurb but my excitement peaked there. Although it was a short read, it was difficult to follow. There were a lot of blanks left in the plot line that kept you guessing what might have actually happened. In my opinion, the fact the every character had a one-letter name made it even harder to follow.

Me 96% of the time while reading the book: "Is K this person? Or is it F? Or wait...is that N?"

I had expected a dystopia that toys with current ongoing worries about climate change and global warming. In that regard it didn't let me down and gave me this unruly feeling most dystopias manage to cause. Maybe this even more as it puts its finger right on the pulse of the time.
However, it offers so much more than that. With few words, rough paint strokes, Megan Hunter creates her pictures, this oppressive atmosphere of a grey bleakness as well as moments of panic and depression. But underlying it all is this sense of - and I can't find a different word that would sound less corny - hope. It is all in the description of Z's developments. Time passes and despite what the state of the world is, the child grows and goes through those stages we all had to go through - teething, crawling, learning to stand up.

It reminded me of The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.
It is less a novel and more a kind-of poem. A lot is cut out and left entirely to the imagination of the reader. I admit that I got confused more than once at the sudden "jumps" in narration but it all fell back into place upon reading on.
The writing is fantastic and fits perfectly the story Megan Hunter tells. I'm in absolute awe and glad I found this gem.
The only thing that caused some frowning on my part were the (I think?) quotes. I would have loved a bibliography what had been taken from where unless it was all from the Bible. In that case, ignore me... I'm no expert but I think I recognised more than one religion in those quotes/references hence why I would have liked to be able to check what the sources were without having to google it all myself. (I'm lazy... I admit that too.)

I love a good dystopian story just as much as the next person, but this was hard to get into. The first half felt more like ramblings than anything else, and I think setting up the story could've been tighter. On the other hand, it was disjointed, which is pretty akin to what we would actually experience should of entire existence be uprooted from a natural disaster. Unfortunately, it was still hard to follow along.

Once you get about 50% in, the writing begins to flow and settle down so to speak. The random poetry throughout sometimes works, and sometimes it's awkward. This second half shifts more pointedly towards the theme of motherhood and survival. Or put differently, the survival of motherhood.

This was a solid 2 stars, until the second half where the story got better.

*Thanks to Netgalley and Publisher for ARC in exchange for honest review.*

The writing is poetic and slow, it feels like reading a waltz. I do think that this would be a beautiful and gentle read for mothers

Thank you for the opportunity to review this novella. I enjoyed it, generally, though it didn't really touch on any new ground. (That's a challenging goal now, of course, with the genre so saturated)
For those interested, I'll recommend it.

Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From presents a drowned version of a post-apocalyptic London where its inhabitants are forced on a mass exodus from the capital as living conditions become more treacherous and flood waters rise. As a post-apocalyptic novel, it’s more concerned about one mother’s love for her new born child, and raising him during this exodus, rather than the actual dystopian world they find themselves in – unfortunately, as a childless twentysomething, I can’t say this novel particularly spoke to me in quite the same way as it seems to have done so for many other readers.

In concept, Megan Hunter’s debut is chilling – it presents a vision of a post-apocalyptic London which has been hit by flood waters, and is slowly forcing Londoners to leave their homes behind and head north in order to try to escape the flood. It’s a story of exodus set against the story of birth amidst destruction, figuratively and literally, because the main character must survive this apocalypse with a newborn baby in tow. Readers see the baby’s growth over the days, weeks, and months, and the special maternal bond which exists and is not altered at all by the reality of the horrible apocalypse which surrounds this mother and child. Interludes of various creation stories interject amidst the main domestic narrative of a new mother and child provide the obvious link between Hunter’s narrative and Biblical themes of birth, destruction, and rebirth.

However, for all its interesting concept, I found the pacing and style to be much too forced for my liking. There was something artistic and abstract and purposeful about it that rubbed me up the wrong way. The writing was undoubtedly accomplished, and I can see that Megan Hunter has a background not only in English literature but specifically in writing poetry. I can well believe that, because this read a tad like an extended narrative poem, written in free verse, and it is a style of poetry that I just don’t “get” the same way that other readers do – it’s just not to my personal taste, so once I realised this novel was in that vein, I’m afraid it was an insurmountable issue for me.

Comparisons can be, I think, fairly drawn between The End We Start From and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – both novels feature a parent and child dynamic and story of survival amidst a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape. Like The Road, in The End We Start From we are never permitted to learn the full names of the characters, nor are they described with particular attention or detail – a lot of the work must be done by the reader’s own imagination. The writing style is sparse in both but, for my money, I didn’t quite get along with this in Megan Hunter’s debut – I didn’t understand the claims of lyricism and profundity that a lot of reviewers and readers praised in this novel, to me it was just too abstracted and fragmentary, it didn’t feel like a sustained or particularly nuanced novel. It felt more like the vague impression or draft of a novel, rather than a finished product. For me, it just didn’t have enough pages in order to for a reader to really connect with the characters and to go somewhere. I didn’t feel anything for the mother and child, perhaps due to my own lack of life experience that prevented this story from really hitting home for me. Really, the sparse style just wasn’t my cup of tea.

In summary, this book is beautifully produced, and the overriding concept of (re)birth after destruction is an intriguing idea, it’s just a shame that for me, ultimately, the execution of the idea fell vastly short of all its hype.

I LOVE apocalyptic fiction and this does NOT disappoint! For some reason it reminds me of A Discovery of Witches, tho the storylines are nowhere near the same of course, the style feels similar. Just an engrossing read!

My main (actually, my only) criticism is that it should have been longer. Really enjoyed it!

A beautifully written novel, haunting in every way, a unique take on the end of the world told through the special bond of mother and child... but is this really a novel or a novella? One has to wonder why it was so short, almost as if you read an advanced outline rather than the full thing. If the one critique you get is that you wish there was more, then you're doing something right... but perhaps this took that concept a bit too far. Could've been a great, but in my eyes it fell short. 4 out of 5.

Gorgeous cover and prose that showcases how elegant the English language can be in its simplest forms. Still, a bit sparse for my tastes.

<p>By Megan Hunter</p>

Rating: 3.5/5

<p>This short novella (160 pages) is poetic prose about the end of the world as we know it. Told from the perspective of a woman who gives birth as England is submerged in floods and people are fleeing to survive. She takes her little family on a journey from shelter to shelter, displaced by the tragedy. This book is about facing the unknown through the lens of motherhood, which may be the first dystopian novel(la) I've read that does so. </p>

<b>What I liked:</b>
-The poetic prose. It is mostly empty pages and figurative language. It reads like journal entries of the deepest most private thoughts. It allows for a frankness and raw emotion that is sometimes difficult to portray in prose.
-The story of new motherhood and how it can be distilled to the most basic of needs: food, sleep, shelter. How people will do anything to just survive and babies will learn and grow even when everything else seems to regress. Motherhood is terrifying in the best of times.
-Death isn't avoided but it's also approached from a side angle. The narrator has to deal with the consequences of death all around her but doesn't come face to face with it.
<What I didn't like:</b>
-I feel like I wasn't completely satisfied at the end. I want to know more about what happened and how it happened and why it happened. But I guess, like in real life, we don't always get the clean explanation and conclusion we want.

<p><br />
Publisher: Picado<br />
Publication date: May 18, 2017<br />
Date read: July 1, 2017</p>

Review on my blog : The One with the London Moses

Another day, another apocalypse. In Megan Hunter's The End We Start From, England has been hit with some unspecified catastrophe that involves rising flood waters. People are evacuated, the military comes out, borders and checkpoints are established. In amongst all of this, the narrator has her first child, Z and the story follows Z’s first few years of life in post-disaster Britain.

Megan Hunter’s prose is spare to the point of almost being poetry. Short sentences in short paragraphs, interspersed with quotes. This gives a point of difference to a story that has now been told a few too many times. All of the clichés are there – the refugee camps, nasty roadside border guards, saviours with a boat, a short time of salvation on a remote island – but in a poetic form that makes it, to some extent feel new again.

The focus of the book is Z’s first few years of life. While growing up in the middle of a crisis, the narrator’s relationship with her son and her observations might well have just been happening in any day care centre. Z smiles, Z learns how to eat solids, Z pulls himself to his feet, Z learns how to walk. Given the lack of any real threat most of the time, the vague post-apocalyptic setting and styling do not make these achievements particularly interesting.

The End We Start From feels like an interesting experiment in a sub-genre that seems to be exploding. This is a simple tale with no great pandemic or war or zombies or killer robots. And much like the Lily Brooks-Dalton's recent Good Morning, Midnight, it is quiet and contemplative, any violence or action happening well off-screen. Just a woman and her newborn son, surviving in a world that has become inhospitable. A poetic post-apocalypse.

These days, a dystopian novel has to really do something different and exciting to grab my attention--this trend seems nearly played out, and I didn't feel this book really had anything new to offer the genre.

Short, interesting but not for me. That is the easiest way for me to describe this book. Told in first person, The End We Start From is a journey with a woman who has just had her baby as London begins to flood. With her husband she escapes to her in laws who live in the mountain. From there it’s a story of survival and motherhood. I wanted more. Hunter’s writing style is vague and lacking in detail. While that style helped keep the focus on her and her child, it wasn’t enough for me to become invested in the story. The world building wasn’t concise or fleshed out, instead I was left imagining exactly how dire the situation was based on the lack on information provided: a tent, a bed, a bench. The plot moved but the only motivating factor was the aging of the child with the passing of time. I’m not sure what I learned about the mother as a person because her only focus was the baby with few flashbacks into the world before the flood. The lack of detail, world building and character development kept me from truly enjoying this dystopian tale. It is a quick read but not one I can readily recommend.

A perfect end-of-the-world story with less of the end and more of the world.
Megan Hunter shows us a believable end of the world, the waters have risen and people are fleeing. Z's just had her first child and she would do anything to protect him, to her the end of the world does not matter as long as she has her son. Hunter presents us with a different idea of the end of the world, she chooses to focus of the importance of human relationships and the goodness of people, putting a larger faith in the world. Her writing is poetic and beautiful and captures perfectly the goodness of a world in a bad situation.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free eBook copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a lot shorter than I thought it was going to be, so I actually ended up sitting down and reading it in an evening. The End We Start From has some really beautiful, and almost lyrical prose. I wasn’t expecting an apocalyptic book to be written like this, and right away it hooked me on the book.

The characters in this book were all named with just initials, which was interesting. Though I felt it made the characters feel a little distant. I never really felt for them as much as I wanted too, and as much as I thought the story had potential to make me feel. But I did like the idea of seeing the end of the world from the point of view of a mother. In the end I decided to give this book 3.5 stars.

Congratulations to Megan Hunter for a well-written first novel. A young woman gives birth to a son as London is submerged by floodwaters and everyone flees. She, her partner, and her son flee north into a dangerous territory to save themselves. The story is centered on the woman bonding with her son under extraordinary conditions. Set in the future, the book ultimately demonstrates renewal and rebirth. The story has much tragedy, yet it didn't evoke emotion from me - I couldn't seem to care about the characters and their situation. I would have liked to see more character development and more detail in the story; however, I can appreciate the abstractness of the human situation under difficult circumstances.

Thanks to Megan Hunter and Grove Atlantic through Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I am at a serious loss how to review this book. The blurb on the back of this book told me it was an interesting read. Then I read a review that gave the opposite of what I expected. So me being me I just had to read it. I wouldn't say I was disappointed, I wouldn't say it was what I expected. The book left me feeling empty and with a what the hell have I just read feeling.

I will admit it is quite well written. The book is about a young women giving birth for the first time while London is being swallowed by water. Then you get the journey of mother and child escaping the flood waters going from refugee camp to refugee camp. Finally arriving back home and being reunited with the husband/father. Sounds good right?

The book basically describes the babies first year in the world and how he relates to the world ending on his ability to take his first steps. The story left me feeling disjointed and now I've finished I am still waiting for something. I just don't know what.

I think finishing this book was an achievement but I am also pleased I did finish it. Again I can't explain why. Have a go I did. Enjoy!


*ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley*


https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2036289208


https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1KD50JQETX6J6/ref=pe_1572281_66412651_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv