Thank you to Net Galley and Melville House for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. The story takes place in Brooklyn as we follow Sam and Eleanor's life together. They are in love and it's winter...and the world is about to end. Yet, they have rent to pay, and Sam has bill's and has just lost his job. Even though the world is ending, they are still living their lives and loving one another. The writing has a stream-of-consciousness type feel. We learn of their daily lives - Eleanor's good paying but stressful job that she doesn't really like and Sam looking for a job but considering that the world is falling apart, he's not very hopeful. Yet, there is lots of cooking and enjoying food, secret police who abduct people for various reasons while the world keeps on turning and commentary on real world issues such as politics, climate change, student loans, etc. I wasn't sure how much I would like to the style of the writing but I really enjoyed the absurdity along with the real world discussion of issues. An interesting debut and I'll be looking forward to the author's sophomore effort.

While I appreciate the craftsmanship, I can't say I enjoy the experience, Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World is a complete, unapologetic artistic expression, an absurdist, stream of consciousness fantasy about a couple as their city is on the brim of a nuclear attack. The writing fully captures the quiet mundane 2 individuals comfortably in love (every time a character cooks, the story would go on a lengthy tangent describing the recipe, the ingredient, and the flavor—so convincingly I would salivate), and the bleakest humor (like a fallout shelter got converted into a rent control unit, in addition to topics ranging from police brutality, corruption, to climate change). In term of execution, Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World 100% delivers.

The issue simply lies in that this is not the type of storytelling I gravitate towards. I can appreciate the nonlinear, scatterbrain progression much more, has it been a 100-page novella. At almost 300 pages, my attention drifts very quickly without a concrete plot or relatable characters to latch on to. A friend of mine, who has a degree in literature, is actually mentioned in the author's acknowledgment, and I can totally see this being right up his alley: extremely literary, and one can really dig deep decoding its wordsmith, symbolism, historical reference, and tonal juxtaposition.

I'm basic when it comes to reading, give me a gripping story with some stylistic flourishes and I'm sold. Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World is a little too highbrow and intellectual for me—I 'get' it and can enjoy it in small snippets, but a novel of it is too much.

Just wasn't for me -- the prose was a bit too cerebral, the story unlinear, and the vibe a bit pretentious.

Love, love, love, LOVED this. A true poet's novel, gorgeous stream-of-consciousness writing on every page with the delightful treat of labor history and kooky apocalypse nonsense. It's funny, it's quirky, it's sweet, it's disarming, and it never loses the thread of the central love story. The world is crashing down around us and we still have love. I will hold onto this one for a long time. Gorgeous work and I want to read a thousand more things like it. Also I love the cover.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for the free ebook in exchange for an honest review.

DNF. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. I couldn't get into this one and gave up after the first chapter. I didn't like the writing style.

This book recognises itself in its fullest potential. I enjoyed every single one of Fletcher's words, some I laughed aloud at, and some saw straight through me I wanted them tattooed on my soul. An absolutely gorgeous, stunning, and enjoyable exploration on what it is to live in America, love, and inevitably die.

“Be Here To Love Me at the End of the World” (2022) is a unique dystopian novel centered around a character driven storyline by Sasha Fletcher. In addition, Fletcher has written a full length collection of poetry: “It’s Going To Be A Good Day” (2016)-- plus a novella and several chapbooks.

(Epigraph) “A love story in a bad dream about America.”
The two main characters of the storyline are Sam and Eleanor, they love one other deeply and live in Eleanor’s small Brooklyn apartment with a nice bathroom. Sam, unable to secure regular employment works contracting freelance writing/editing. Unfortunately, clients are slow to forward payment for services, and Sam pays for the food he cooks for Eleanor with his credit card, and is burdened by high student loan debt that has doubled from the original amount borrowed over a period of eight years. Whereas Eleanor has a steady job working for a tech firm, her pay doesn’t keep up economically, but she gets a free pass to ride the train to work and gets free vouchers to ballgames, that Sam really enjoys.
The storyline can take the reader from World War II, to the assassination of an American president and his brother in the 1960’s. The death of Christ and the start of the Gregorian calendar on October 15, 1582 is mentioned. The Jews sit Shiva for a week since it took our Lord seven days to create the earth. There are a few other characters that are introduced midway through the novel. It is particularly stressful for the U.S. to live with the constant fear and threat of nuclear attack. The president rules the country, reducing unemployment benefits, claiming people aren’t looking hard enough for work. The secret police can arrive from anywhere within minutes zipping people into body bags then driving away in unmarked vans. The NYC trains run on schedule but can be stopped without notice at any time. A multitude of Angelic beings watch over people and the city, a child drives his tricycle out a high apartment window and then plays happily in the street below.

There are also ghosts in this surreal environment and much is observed. Despite re-reading several parts and skimming others, especially the repetitive detailed elaborate meals that Sam prepared for his beloved Eleanor. I was so curious to see if I could actually understand what was happening in this long complex storyline, the interpretation and meaning are left to the reader to contemplate. (2*FAIR) **With thanks to Melville House Publishing via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.

Wow. I adored this strange novel that is part love story, part dystopian tale, part history lesson. Feels like a likely candidate for next year’s Tournament of Books.

tender and pretentious in basically exactly right amount and ratio to appeal to me personally. i'm so tired i just want to be loved!!

Relatable, contemporary and engrossing; Fletcher's "Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World" is one of those novels that one cannot put down, not because of the plot twists, but because the prose is flowing, the meta-narrative is absorbing, the characters are truly fleshed out and feel familiar, Brooklyn is not just a city but another character, and an important one at that.

I'm torn! On the one hand, the prose is beautiful, and the love story that is central to the novel was a joy to step into. But, on the other, there was something a little tedious on a narrative level, both due to the narration/POV instability, and also the looseness in timeline that exists, where Fletcher dips into histories of the US and the world. The novel is often fascinating, and a part of me wishes that perhaps more of a plot would have allowed Fletcher to do more with this dystopian world. Still, in the end, this succeeds as a strong love story and examination of the future of the US, especially in regards to the debt crisis. Riveting stuff, if a little disquieting.

Looking forward to reading more of Fletcher. Thanks for the e-galley!

This felt just like Donald Barthelme filtered through a modern millennial sensibility. And that's a very good feeling. Postmodern in the 50's and 60's was unnerving enough, but I can see how current events have upgraded the threat level to actual End of the World. This version is a little rough around the edges in parts, and sometimes heavy handed, but I guess you have to expect that when the author is focused on punching you in the head. A wonderful find.

"Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World" by Sasha Flercher, will be published February 15, 2022.

Sam and Eleanor are deeply in love. Sam is so broke he struggles to pay the rent. This leaves Eleanor to do it. They live in snowy Brooklyn, In their world of panic and severe anxiety, the Government makes dooms day statements about the end of the world. There is a so called "secret police" that kill people on-site and have eyes on everything.

What I like:
Sam and Eleanor try to go about daily living in spite of the negative. Sam serves lovely dinners for Eleanor at the end of her day. He finds employment and Eleanor helps Sam pay the bills. There is a huge focus on their love for one another. They try to live a normal life as best they can given the dire circumstances

What I dislike:
The timeline skips around and there are no light moments, The author goes on and on in rants usually in all capital letters to enforce the dark and extremely disturbing ideas. There is no mention of the pandemic, but "the end of the world" in graphic detail is the main focus of this book. I am sure it has an audience, but it's not me. It left me feeling melancholy and like I need a shower to wash all the negative off after reading the book.

Thank you NetGalley and Melville House Publishing, for allowing me to review this e-book in exchange for my honest opinion. I appreciate you very much.

This book was a glorious love story, both of the characters to each other and of the author to humanity. There were some moments that I didn't think advanced the plot and wasn't sure why they were included. However, I chalked them up to this being Fletcher's first novel and, overall, it was a delight.

This ended up a DNF. Too stream of consciousness and scatological for my tastes. There didn't seem to be a real plot happening.

If a socially conscious, socialism leaning, well-educated, precociously stylistic, hopelessly romantic millennial was somehow magically turned into a book…this would have been the result.
Which is to say it is about as tolerable as you would find such a person. But also, strangely compelling. Quite a bizarre combination. Under all the stylistic flair which includes weirdly formatted pages where the text takes up only about 3/4th of the page lined up in a neat vertical columns, there is actually a proper story.
The story features two characters, Sam and Eleanor. They are somewhere in their early 30s, somewhere in NYC, trying to get by in the world increasingly hostile to bare survival. Sam is underemployed, but he’s good in bed and in the kitchen, so Eleanor floats the bills for most of the story. They are very much in love, though they are smart enough to be justifiably terrified by the world around them.
The story is presented by a sort of omniscient narrator, who, along with the characters, tends to go on these elaborate sociopolitical tangents chronicling the decline of the country around them. These are actually surprisingly good, often the highlights of the entire production, because they are so (sadly) accurate that they create a nicely apocalyptic ambiance for the entire production. It’s a slow apocalypse, like the proverbial boiling of a frog, the water gets hotter slowly enough that people continue to tread it.
Sam especially is completely hampered by college loans, so there’s much discussion of that. But there are other things, like race, politics, etc. And while you may disagree with the novel’s distinctly socialism take on them, the facts are undeniably there for you to draw your own depressing conclusions. Or not, presumably, since we do live in the country that has a peculiar disdain for facts.
The thing with this novel is that normally I likely would find it tediously precocious, over-stylized, over-done, and yet there’s something so nice and refreshing and relatable about having someone be terrified and appalled by the state of things the way one, by all rights, ought to be…that it kind of acts as the book’s saving grace.
Overall, from a purely fictional perspective this may not be the greatest novel and it certainly won’t be to everyone’s liking, although it’s terribly hip and is sure to gather acclaim that way, but it is undeniably an excellent representation of its time and its generation and on that merit alone it works very nicely. The end of the world is nigh, don’t be alone, find someone to love. Find a book to read. Thanks Netgalley.