The End We Start From

By Megan Hunter

Longlisted for the 2018 Aspen Words Literary Prize
Finalist for the Barnes & Noble 2017 Discover Great New Writers Award


An indelible and elemental debut—a lyrical vision of the strangeness and beauty of new motherhood, and a tale of endurance in the face of unimaginable change.      In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family is forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.      This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family's world—of new life and new hope—sings with love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Nov 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9780735235038

Megan Hunter

Megan Hunter’s first novel, The End We Start From, was published in 2017 in the UK, US, and Canada, and has been translated into eight languages. It was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Books Are My Bag Awards, longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Awards finalist and won the Forward Reviews Editor’s Choice Award. Her writing has appeared in publications including The White Review, The TLS, Literary Hub, and BOMB Magazine. She lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband, son and daughter.

Reviews for The End We Start From

[tamidale · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a very short novel about a woman who gives birth in a dystopian world. It captured my interest from the first paragraph. The descriptions of what has happened are quite sparse. We know that there has been a flood and many people have had to leave their homes. After the flooding, there were fires. Many people ended up living as refugees and food was scarce.During all the turmoil, baby Z is going through the stages of his first year, oblivious to all the upheaval around him. However, the message is clear--no matter what happens in this world--life goes on and people adapt to difficult circumstances.The story reminded me somewhat of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Both stories are short, with little details given about what has happened in the world and very little interaction between characters.I enjoyed the story, but felt like I just read an excerpt from a novel. It wasn’t an emotional story, there is no violence, but readers will get a sense that the characters are living in a dangerous world.Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for allowing me to read an advance copy and give my honest review

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this in one sitting. It is an account, narrated in poetic snippets, of a cataclysmic flooding of London just as the unnamed narrator goes into labor. She, her husband, and her baby become refugees. The narrator is less concerned with giving details of this apocalyptic event than with observing how her son grows and reaches his milestones, just as all new mothers do. The effect is a reminder of what's important, a cutting through of the detritus of modern life to the basics of just being alive. This works, I think, because of the spare and simple style of the writing, which omits the details but retains the emotions, and its structure like an epic poem, interspersed with lines from religious and mythological texts.

[amaliagavea · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

‘’In the darkness demons flew. Their shapes made a fearful noise until a voice called out, and they were still, and the silence was complete.’’

When we have read 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale , it is reasonable to believe that it would be rather difficult to be touched by any other dystopian novel. Yet, we may be mistaken. At least, I was. Frightfully. I frankly don’t know where to begin with The End We Start From. It shocked me, frightened me, moved me and disturbed me. And as far as I am concerned, it managed to enter my personal Holy Trinity of dystopian novels.

The story starts with a birth, the eternal symbol of life, hope and continuation. An unnamed couple is one of the few remaining parents of a hospital before it’s forced to close down. Why?Because terrible floods have been plaguing the land and London has become almost uninhabitable. There is no electric power, no internet, no television, no work and food has become scarce. They abandon their flat in order to find shelter in camps, in areas that are still dry. The odyssey of coping with a new way of life is the heart of the novel.

‘’Our city is here,somewhere, but we are not.’’

How does someone find the strength to carry one once everything is lost? Where do we find courage to survive and, perhaps, build our lives again? One of the most powerful motives- if not THE most powerful- is the welfare of our children. The mother, who is our sole eyes and ears in the entire story, finds comfort in the company of other mothers who try to provide for their newborns, and in watching her own son grow day by day. Little Z is blissfully unaware of the situation and discovers the world through his own instinct with his mother’s help.One of the ways she implores to keep her sanity is going back, retreating in childhood memories.

‘’Once someone knocked me over. An accident, I presumed. He didn’t look back.’’

Humanity lies at the heart of the story. Why does she say ‘’presumed’’ to refer to a past incident? An accident we all have faced, especially when commuting daily. Is the spreading of inhumanity and personal isolation one of the signs and causes of disaster? Perhaps we need to face a universal catastrophe in order to realise how wrong we have been, how imprisoned in our microcosm? The mother doesn’t answer her own questions, she contemplates, tries to find something that could possible make sense and hold on until a new day dawns.

To talk about themes, characters and language in this book seems to me dry and completely unnecessary. There is no dialogue, only short sentences that reminded me of the best examples of existential poetry. And yet, in two short paragraphs there is more character development than we meet in whole chapters in other books. The mother’s voice is completely humane, sometimes desperate,most of the times calm and acute.

The story of Noah from the Old Testament, the Greek myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha are constantly used in the narration. Most civilizations have their own myth of the Flood as a punishment for the avarice of men. Perhaps, mankind has been afraid of the power of water since the beginning of Time, perhaps we’ve known the damage we cause to everything that was given to us. There are also many references to myths of the Creation from many different cultures.

I don't think that anyone who is going to read this novel will manage to remain indifferent. It is a beautiful book, with a moving, profound and hopeful conclusion. A breath of fresh air in the zombie-filled, tortured and abused Dystopian Genre, a novel that we’re going to discuss for years to come…

ARC kindly provided by Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an honest review.

[kaylaraeintheway · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I finished this book in one sitting (which, admittedly, isn't very hard to do, since it's relatively short and sparsely written - in the best sense). We follow an unnamed woman as she, her husband, and their newborn baby must get to safety after a near-apocalyptic flooding in England. We know only what she does - snippets from the news; food shortages, civil unrest. Her whole being is centered on this little baby that she clings to the same way that he clings to her - for life and love. Megan Hunter is a beautiful writer, able to convey so much in a bundle of short sentences.

[junipersun · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was shared with my by my daughter-in-law, who is a midwife and mother of young children. She loved it. Its probably the perfect book for a young mother who only has brief segments of time for any personal reading.This book is very different from what I usually read. As a novel in an end-times setting, it gives little detail about the disaster. The focus is on the thoughts and emotions of a mother who gives birth just as everything is changing. Told in somewhat of a dreamstate, or now-centered, I interpret this as being similar to the immediacy-focus of a new mother...everything is centered around the child's needs, everything reflects the disrupted patterns of a mother whose rest is constantly interrupted to nurse or tend to the newborn. (Or, as an older adult, I also wonder if this disjointed flow reflects an author who was raised on short-segmented TV cartoon soundbites.) People are identified only by initial, which keeps us from assigning race, culture or other pre-concevied notions. The first person narrative is periodically broken by an italicized sentence, which seem to be quotes from some description of the endtime events, but not from a scientific or reporter view. They seem to be as a world beginning might be told millenia from now. At first I tried to match them with the events the narrator is going thru, but couldn't completely make it work that way. The author does mention that she modeled those sections after various creation myths she had researched.

[catherinehsu · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Agh. I really thought I would love this. I'm a huge fan of dystopian novels, and I love reading poetic, elegant writing. I wasn't sure how they would work together, but after reading this book - I'm not too sure it works.There were definitely places where the writing style was beautiful, but overall I think it worked against the story. Because it was so soft and airy, the story lost a lot of its intensity and speed - things that are typically very important to a dystopian universe. In fact, if I hadn't read the blurb that said that this book followed a newborn as London was flooded, I'm not sure I would have known that that was what was happening.In addition to that, it felt really hard to connect with the characters because they were named only by a single alphabet letter, and sometimes I got confused with who was who. Understandably all of these aspects come together to make a disconnected and jarring writing style that parallels the story's situation, but it was simply a little hard to understand for me.If you're looking for some really beautiful quotes to write down, then go for The End We Start From. But if you want a true dystopian with harrowing action, look elsewhere.

[jane3phillips-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel is the story of a new mother who soon after giving birth is forced to evacuate London due to rising flood waters that submerge the city and her experience moving from place to place as a refugee. This was a very different book in the way it was written as the prose is very sparse and the characters are all named by capital letters, but this style seemed to fit very well with the story. I felt it is also timely and believable in today's world when we are all at the mercy of unpredictable climate and weather patterns due to climate change.

[beamis12 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A very interesting and timely premise. The water levels are rising, London already under water, and it is spreading to cover different cities and towns. A young woman is about to give birth, and soon has baby Z. Fascinating juxtsposition, a pending breakdown of society, with the wonder of a new birth. They are forced to move, again and again from camp to camp, as the water rises, and as food supplies dwindle. Baby Z grows, and a mother's love for her child very apparent. The story is told in short, sparse paragraphs, with quotes from the book of Genesis, creation and the flood, interspersed between certain segments. This was done so well, but there was one hurdle I could not overcome. The constant use of initials, bugged me to no end, and also made this short book confusing, trying to sort out and remember who was who. Possibly this was done to show that in a society collapse, an environmental disaster, names no longer matter, only survival does, but for me it lessened the impact of the story bring told.I am not sorry I read this, it had important issues to convey, and many reviewers did not find the same impossibility of jumping through the hurdle that I could not. Judge for yourself.

[mattclark_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A different take on the post apocalyptic genre. The only action in this story happens off screen so to speak, this is all about coping as a mother and the growth of her baby. The demand of motherhood and the progress of the child both follow the same old patterns even after the end if the world as we know it.

A quiet and surprisingly positive story given the dark setting. I enjoyed it.

[elainedav · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is an unusual novella, set in the future when London is ruined by floods. The book opens with the birth of a baby. The father 'R' is not around and sends his friend 'S', who brings his friend 'J' to help. Throughout, characters are referred to only by their initial. I didn't like this, I found it confusing to remember who was who and to keep track of the characters. Perhaps this was the point - I have read in another review that the author was trying to portray confusion.The storyline moves at a good pace and is easy to follow. The main character, who narrates throughout, and her partner 'R' and the baby leave London and initially live with 'R's' parents. It reminded me alot of The End of the World Running Club, except that was an asteroid strike and this was a flood. But in both cases these books make you think about what you would do if your home and town were evacuated - where would you go, how would you live etc.I think I would have liked The End we Start From better if it had been a full book. The writing is good, but in places it is brief and moves along at too fast a pace. I guess I am saying I was disappointed that it was so short.Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[theelliemo · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I’m undecided about this book. It’s short, almost a novella, about a new mother coping in the aftermath of an environmental disaster that floods London (and presumably much of the south of the UK, not that that warrants a mention). Potentially a good story, but it’s delivery, in disjointed sentences, and the use of initials rather than names - the mother is unnamed, the father is R, the child Z, and so on, render it soulless. I just didn’t care.

[jlslipak · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Description:In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z’s small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family’s world – of new life and new hope – sings with love.MY THOUGHTS:I received this book in exchange for an honest review.Yes, this book came out in May 2017 and it’s taken me this long to post my review. Let me explain. I’ve attempted four times to read and finish this book without success. On the fifth try, I persevered and finished it.This book, oh this book… I get what the author was trying to do, really I do. However, identifying people by a letter was as personable as stamping a number on their wrist… hmmm sounds like another form of identification used that I know of. The problem when writing in the style she chose is that you become detached from the characters, or at least, I did. It’s hard to connect with someone, watch how they develop as the story develops and become invested in them to join them on the journey to self-discovery. It’s the reason why we have names, to be unique and an individual, rather than a number/letter impersonal and coded for identification. Maybe it’s just me. I’m really neither a character driven story lover or a plot driven story lover. It switches often depending on the book. But I need to like the characters and the author introduces more and more and those with just a letter for a name, I had to go back to figure out who she was talking about.Anyway, the actual writing of the book is interesting and the concept original and creative. I gave stars for this originality.The premise was also intriguing and why I wanted to read this book.Other than that, it’s not for me and I really didn’t enjoy the story because I kept getting tied up in the word usage and name issues. The story left me feeling lost and exhausted and uninterested. Sorry but not for me!

[irregularreader · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Catastrophic environmental change has brought biblical floods to London. As the city succumbs to the water, a woman gives birth to a baby boy, who she and her husband name Z. As the flood waters continue to rise, the woman and her husband must flee the city with a days old baby in search of safety and higher ground. As Z grows from baby to toddler, the family is forced to find new refuge again and again.Okay. This was not my type of book. The writing is excellent, Hunter has a minimalist style that is somewhere between a steam of consciousness narrative and a poem. The cataclysmic destruction of the English landscape fades into background noise against the interaction of the woman and her son. But as someone who is not exactly baby-friendly, there are waaaaaaay too many descriptions of baby bowel movements for my peace of mind. Honestly, the whole “children are the future” thing seems a little overly optimistic when the planet is literally falling apart around you.But, I’m absolutely willing to admit that most of the problems I had with this book stem from my own anti-baby tendencies. The book is truly beautifully written, and showcases a legitimate debut talent. The steam of consciousness reminds me a bit of The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida. While this book was not up my alley, I would be excited to read Hunter’s future works.A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[hubblegal-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A mother gives birth to a baby. However, the parents’ happiness is marred by the floodwaters that are rising all around them. They’re forced to evacuate with the newborn infant. They need to keep moving to find land above the flood levels. The news that is coming to them is not encouraging. Panic has spread and the world is no longer a safe place.What a contrast – the beauty of the birth of a child and his discoveries of the fascinating world around him against the harsh reality of a planet that may soon be covered in water. This is a hauntingly beautiful novella that I was totally captivated by. Just the author’s brilliant capture of early motherhood is enough to make this one a winner. But the suspense of the ongoing flooding adds such a touch of horror that I was dismayed at the prospect of these lovely people. The author has managed to pack an enormous amount of emotion into such few words. This is an amazing accomplishment and I can’t wait to see what’s ahead from Ms. Hunter. Most highly recommended.This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.

[carriewuj · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a force. It is deceptively short but incredibly thought-provoking - about relationships, about community, about our physical world. Post-apocalyptic, the story is a balance of opposites: life and death, ending and beginnings, hope and despair. London is overcome by a rising sea level within days of the narrator giving birth to her first child, a son names Z. All names are indicated just by a first initial, which is an interesting stylistic choice. She and her husband R flee the city with baby Z to his home area - further inland and in a mountainous area, which they think will guarantee their safety. However, anarchy soon reigns and their supplies and safety are threatened. This means a trip across the border into Scotland and a stay in a refugee camp and a complete reversal of fortune and circumstance - all while trying to adjust to motherhood and the needs of a newborn infant. Survival is a strong instinct and it is heightened in the new state of parenthood. While not a lot happens specifically - everything is narrated with a very matter-of-fact tone and with some distance from the horror of what is happening. The narrator has some thoughtful observations about what is happening and what this might mean for her family- and the author used beautiful poetic prose which is interspersed with true poetry and prose from various creation stories and myths. "Beautifully spare, haunting" is one of the book blurbs and that sums it up nicely.

[shannonrose4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A beautifully crafted story of the journey of motherhood while facing the threat of Mother Nature; the fierce and thoughtful prose make for a gem of a read that will leave you pondering this tale long after the pages are read.

[julesgdside · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm not sure what I read here, but it was good. It was different from what I have read during the last years. It was weirdly beautiful. There were so many things in this book that rang true for me.
It's hard to describe and hard to put a finger to a precise thing that I liked about this novella. Let's suffice to say, I liked all of it.


Thank you to the publishers for the ARC I received through NetGalley.

[josephcamilleri-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

4.5*

At one level, this beguiling debut novel(la) by Megan Hunter can be enjoyed as a work of science fiction, or even as a Mieville-like piece of "new weird". Its setting is a contemporary London made strange by an inexplicable environmental phenomenon - the waters are rising, swallowing cities and towns and bringing about social mayhem. Right at the onset of the deluge, the narrator gives birth to a son - Z. Days later, mother and child have to head to the North to avoid the advancing waters. What follows is a sort of "Baby's First Album" with a post-apocalyptic twist, the child's perfectly natural struggle for survival mirrored by society's attempt to adapt to a new way of life. The link between the two lies in the recurring water imagery - Z's birth in the very first page is marked, of course, by a "breaking of the waters" ("I am waterless, the pool of myself spreading slowly past my toes") reflecting the ominous "waters" which are threatening the city. The novella is, in a way, a celebration of new motherhood but, thanks to its dystopian backdrop, it eschews sentimentality leaving only a warm, essential humanity.

Going through earlier reviews of this book, I noted that several readers were put off by the spareness of the prose; others were struck by a sense that the premise of the novel was not fully realised. Admittedly, several details are left undefined and the plot (if one can speak of one) could be summarised in a half-page paragraph (in large font...). However, I felt that Hunter was aiming for the pregnant conciseness of poetry, preferring metaphor and allusion to a more typical working-out of characters and storyline. (She is, after all, a published poet). Indeed, I often found myself re-reading certain passages, delighted by a surprising image or turn of phrase.

I also think that there is in the writing a deliberate attempt to reference mythological storytelling, and to make of this tale a sort of universal parable. Thus, although we get to share some of the characters' most intimate moments, they are only identified by a letter (for instance, the narrator's husband is "R", his parents "G" and "N"). We know that the boy is named "Zeb" (which, incidentally, means "wolf", surely no coincidence) but from then on he is referred to as "Z" (last letter of the alphabet - possibly, the end we start from?) The mythical element is also emphasized through strange italicized passages interspersed in the text, which seem to mimic Biblical apocalyptic imagery - just to give a taste:

In these days we shall look up and see the sun roaming across the night and the grass rising up. The people will cry without end, and the moon will sink from view

I read the book in a couple of sittings but I suspect that, like poetry, it merits to be revisited for it to further reveal its mysteries.