I liked the idea of this post-flood book. The style is interesting, as we follow one new mother into this post-natal and post flood world. While overall, the novella is a complete work, it left me wanting more. Not so much in length as in depth. It felt shallow and never hit the emotions I would have expected. Perhaps the terse style of the author just isn't my cup of tea. Still, worth a read if you like fresh voices.

This was a pretty interesting book. It was short and that bugged me a little bit. I felt more story could have been told. But I realized by the end, that it just works. The way it was told was very different more than anything I have ever read.

A confusing stream of consciousness,with some beautiful writing, but overall I found the lack of structure distracting, and felt like the book just scratched the surface of the story I wanted to read.

I found the book was much too short, it seemed to cram too much into too little but yet left out so much too. The language was beautiful but less flowery script and more information would have suited me.

Tiresome plot did not agree with minimalist descriptions. The author should have done a better job at world building and making characters relatable.

A poetic tale of motherhood and survival, beautifully written and atmospheric.

I had a hard time getting into this book. I really dislike this type of writing, where everything is clipped phrases. Since I did not finish the book, I do not intend to publish a review.

I read this all the way through, because it's a quick read, but it's not my cup of tea.

This was not a book I would normally read, a style I'm not familiar with but one that I did enjoy reading.. The book is in a style that I'm not used to so at first it threw me but you easily get into the flow of what is happening. It is reminiscent of The Road but you seem to know even less about the surroundings and what is actually going on. It lends itself to opening up your imagination to what has happened and what sort of life these people lead. However, the overwhelming feeling of the story is one of love. It is thought provoking and a very quick read.

A sparsely told tale of disaster and new motherhood, and how some things remain the same while eveything else falls apart. An unnamed new mother gives birth to Z, a boy, just as a flood devastates London and beyond. She, Z and her husband R flee to scotland, to R's parents until that situation goes horribly wrong too. They become refugees, fleeing with barely the clothes they stood up in. R runs further, leaving his wife and child in a camp, and somehow they must try to survive. The book is written all in the moment so there is very little context or explanation for the floods and crisis. Our narrator cannot think of the big picture, her world is centred around her baby boy, in a strange echo of many new mothers today. And Z's development is much as babies today - bringing a consistency and relatability to the story.

This is unsettling, fascinating and moving.

This book could be a prequel to American War by Akkad. It opens with a birth and with London flooding. The mother, who narrates, must struggle with motherhood and with raising her child under apocalyptic circumstances. It is told in short diary-like entries, written in very poetic language. Word count is short but the prose is impactful.
Well-written and I liked it, though it felt a bit short for my taste.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a post apocalyptic story about and new mother and son trying to survive. As the waters around her rise, she documents her life. Going from place to place and meeting those that help her and her son along the way.

It is written like a poetic diary. The characters have letter names, as if writing out the full name wasn't needed for her to remember the people. The book is a short 160 pages that I read in less than two hours and I want more. It was such a quick read, like a "cliff notes" version of a larger novel. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it was an interesting way to write but I could see how others might find it a little flat and lacking in details.

There was a lot of talk about breastfeeding which brought back so many wonderful memories of nursing my own children but if you have never nursed a child that aspect might be lost on you.

Overall it was a good read. I would recommend it if someone was looking for a quick read.

This was good, this was very good, in fact so good I read in one sitting!
It is a short novel, a mere 140 pages but it certainly packs a punch.
It is the story of a woman who gives birth in a dystopian London, where floods are threatening to engulf the city and many parts of the country. With her partner H they are forced to flee living in the car before arriving at a refugee camp. When H , himself leaves Mother and baby Z are forced to flee again this time to a remote Scottish Island, totally removed from the flood, fire and conflict engulfing the mainland.
The characters have no names but are represented by letters of the alphabet, there are no obvious conversations, just thoughts on the life in which they find themselves.
Hunter beautifully portrays the mother/ child relationship, the milestones of the first year, the first step Z takes representative of a new beginning, a new life.
The writing is sparse, and economical written in short paragraphs, each word, each sentence, conveying so much intensity and meaning.
I do not usually like dystopian novels but this was one was so good, so immersive, yet poignant and frightening It reminded me of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, but not quite as harrowing or graphic. Not a novel everyone will enjoy but for me an utterly brilliant debut.

"The End We Start From" is a dystopian novella narrated by a woman who gave birth to her first child amidst a catastrophe that caused London to completely flood, displacing all of its residents. I'm a big fan of this genre so I was predetermined to enjoy this short novel. I appreciate dystopian fiction that considers the unique vulnerability of women in a world after society and law and order have broken down. Hunter adds to that the challenges of being a new mother.

While I enjoyed it, the book is so brief that it lacks something. The sparse writing style appears intentional and, in a way, works well with the context of disaster and isolation. There's something about the writing and the brevity of the book that makes the story feel incomplete, however. I wanted to know more about the origins of the disaster and where the husband was and what he experienced during much of the story. It is enjoyable, unique, and worth reading, but not at the top of my list for books in the dystopian genre.

The first thing to say about The End We Start From is it’s not a standard book of fictional prose.

The story is told through beautifully-crafted sentences, isolated like islands on the page. Shots of consciousness, captured like polaroids. Each scene is built from just a handful of these, and there are two or three scenes per page. A flip through this slight book’s pages might suggest it’s poetry rather than prose, and each word feels suitably thoughtful and crafted. With its beautiful artwork too, it’s an exquisite object, filled with exquisite words. One to indulge in the hardback format, treasure, and re-read time and again.

Because The End We Start From works on many layers and takes its time to sink in; it’s a book to mull over, and learn from, rather than be swept away by. On the most immediate and personal level, it’s about new motherhood. It opens with the words: “I am hours from giving birth...” and charts, with wonderful intimacy and freshness, the experience of sharing your world with an entirely dependent human for the first time. But baby Z is born at a time of catastrophe and chaos: the second level in the book is the story of London submerged under rising waters and its citizens becoming refugees; of what happens to people when resources are suddenly limited and how to survive that. And scattered through all of this, is another layer of story again - creation and destruction myths drawn from myths and religions worldwide, dropped through the text in italics. These three layers sit alongside each other with equal resonance, sometimes throwing one another into contrast.

For me the most effective element by far was the portrayal of motherhood, I have rarely read anything so bracingly familiar. The narrator is so immersed in her experience as a new mother it completely overshadows the chaos around her. Cut off from everything and everyone familiar, and stripped of the modern accessories of parenthood - the lemon-painted nursery underwater and the “complicated Baby Play System...all its attachments floating free,” - she reverts to the fleshy and primal. Their relationship is one of nipple and skin and interdependency. She reflects: “I have started to think of myself as a bear, with my young clinging to my neck.”

But this strand is also packed with a knowing humor, from the throwaway - “I am a geriatric primigravida, but I don’t look it,” - to her description of labour, “Between the waves of disembowelling wrench the world is shining. I feel like Aldous Huxley on mescaline.”

Some aspects of parenting are different in this new world: sleeping through the night - because no one sleeps through the night anymore, some things the same: her guilt - when his very first roll rolls him right off the bed, “I am a terrible mother, I think, nestling his unbroken body into my own,” her fear - “The scenarios for his death are the most vivid day-dreams I have ever had.” It’s strangely validating to see the everyday obsessions of parenthood so beautifully written. And these quiet, private moments happen amidst /because of /despite the global chaos of the overriding story.

While the details of motherhood are magnified, the intense action of what is happening around her is muted, pushed into the background. What has actually happened is an unspoken question: climate change is unmentioned but ever present. Some facts are offered: waters have risen and much of London is swallowed - “A list of boroughs, like the shipping forecast,” - people flee, they fight for food, for survival. The world is chaos, but the drama of the book is presented through the narrator's detachment, there is no dialogue, and even when she’s obviously not emotionally detached, she is instead resigned to the inevitable horror, “And yes I scream and hold their clothes and tell them not to go. And yes they go.”

This distance is enhanced by the naming of characters by their initial, rather than name. Her partner is R, her friend, O. But stripped of names these characters’ stories are freed to become universal, their reactions are the inevitable reactions to this dystopian future. The astute details of the motherhood observations serve this purpose too; they are universal in their precision, while the wider story becomes universal in its distance. And so The End We Start From fast becomes a parable, a tale of what might happen to us, a warning. Like the third layer of myths running through the book in italics, we’re left to question how this very familiar world could so easily slip into a new destruction myth.

The End We Start From is a difficult novella to review. The premise is intriguing, as is the writing. However, these are also what lets the book down.
The book is written in the present tense from a first person POV. It is also very fragmented, with short sentences and short paragraphs. All of which makes it feel very urgent, and that’s something that works well for the setting (Britain in the midst of floods and fire and panic). At the same time it means the story lacks substance. There is no dialogue. All people are referred to by an initial only. I would have liked to find out more about the people, the situation, the journey. Despite the intimate writing, I felt I stayed outside the story.
The novella is also very very short. Not only does it not have that many pages (around 125 with actual writing) but each page has lot more white than actual letters on it. I read it in less than an hour. I’m glad I got this as an ARC because I’d have felt cheated if I’d paid money for it.
I feel this novella has a lot of potential but didn’t quite deliver. Yet it’s intriguing and it’s still at the back of my mind even though I finished it last night.

A young couple, the woman is pregnant, only a couple of weeks before the due day for her baby. London is threatened by a flood, people are being evacuated and the couple is affected by the environmental crisis, too. But then the relief, they can stay in their home. However, after the birth of Baby Z, they need to leave their home and move in with the husband’s parents. The crisis aggravates, first the grandmother, then the grandfather dies, they run out of food, then they have to leave and find shelter in a refugee camp. As they move from one place to the next, they are separated, not knowing if they will ever see each other again. Baby Z however, is discovering the world, making his first movements, first steps and saying his first words.

The novel is striking because of Megan Hunter’s rather plain style of writing. Short sentences coupled in short paragraphs. The characters do not have names, only the first letter of their Christian name is given. This equals the shortage by which they are increasingly affected and it intensifies the feeling of hardship and stress. You can feel the reduction to the very necessary in each sentence. The paratactic style keeps you informed, but you do not smoothly float through the novel. I have not often read novels in which the style equally thus perfectly the story. And Megan Hunter has a way of putting action into words which makes you stumble quite often, for instance: “The day they don’t come back from shopping is beautiful.” (Po. 88) How can you ever reduce such a major event in a character’s life in such a sentence ending with an optimistic and promising adjective like “beautiful”?

The young mother is in the centre of the novel. First, we meet her with the well-known fears which all primipara share. But her fears are quickly overshadowed by the crisis which threatens their lives and the deaths of her parents-in-law. It is interesting to see how the style of writing expresses her emotions rather than functions as means for a description of how she perceives her situation.

The opposing developments of, on the one hand, the environmental crisis and on the other the development of Baby Z is masterly designed by the author. The antithesis in the title also picks up this idea. The life they lead before is gone. Your position in your job and in society, your role or roles in life – everything is submerged and questioned, now, all of the survivors have to start anew. The way the characters cope with the situation is also interestingly and convincingly depicted: some can manage, they are true survivors, other try to break out and run away from the situation.

All in all, a short novel which is striking due to the style it is written in.

I was hoping for a dystopian novel in the vein of Station Eleven, so was disappointed to find that this short and sparely written book is actually mainly about motherhood. The story, and approach to a vision of the future, left me cold - I have seen lots of buzz and positivity around this book elsewhere, however, so I feel sure this is simply one of those cases where the book was not right for me.

A confusing novella - 2.5 stars

Reading the blurb, I was intrigued by the plot - a woman fleeing a catastrophic event with her newborn. Reading the novella, I was mostly confused by the plot and repelled by the hardships the protagonist endures, which are described sparingly and vaguely.

I didn't know what was happening for the most part - who was going where and why, where characters had disappeared to, what had actually prompted the apparent mass exodus of London, and why everyone was suddenly returning.

I'm also not sure what the author was trying to convey. Nevertheless the language is often beautiful, lyrical, and hypnotic. The protagonist speaks in a detached way, except when talking about her son.

I neither liked nor disliked the book. I wish it was padded out more because I think there is the beginning of a very good novel here.