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Sign up todayThe End We Start From
Narrator
Louise Brealey
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Length
2 hours 2 minutes
Language
English
Now a major motion picture starring Jodie Comer, executive produced by Benedict Cumberbatch, and written by Alice Birch (Normal People).
The End We Start From heralds the arrival of Megan Hunter, a dazzling and unique literary talent. Hunter’s debut is a searing original, a modern-day parable of rebirth and renewal, of maternal bonds, and the instinct to survive and thrive in the absence of all that’s familiar.
As London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place, shelter to shelter, to a desolate island and back again. The story traces fear and wonder, as the baby’s small fists grasp at the first colors he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.
Written with poise and poeticism, The End We Start From is an indelible and elemental first book—a lyrical vision of the strangeness and beauty of new motherhood, and a portentous tale of endurance in the face of ungovernable change.
Megan Hunter earned a BA in English literature from Sussex University and an MPhil in English literature from Jesus College, Cambridge. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize International Creative Writing Competition, and she was a finalist for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award with her short story “Selfing.”
Louise Brealey, AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, studied history at Cambridge University before studying acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in Manhattan. On television, she appeared in the long-running medical drama Casualty on BBC One in 2002, appearing in ninety-six episodes. Afterwards, she appeared in the BBC serialization of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, as well as Hotel Babylon, Law & Order: UK, Ripper Street, and in all series of Sherlock as Molly Hooper.
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Reviews
“Strange and powerful, and very apt for these uncertain times. I was moved, terrified, uplifted—sometimes all three at once.”
“A new take on the [dystopian] genre, this startling debut combines utter despair with the reality of family life.”
“Virginia Woolf does cli-fi.”
“Poetic and succinct…Hunter’s is an uncommon disaster tale―lovely, intimate, and foreboding.”
“The story may seem familiar…but debut novelist Hunter’s spare prose and luminous writing give it a fresh immediacy.”
“Told in a voice that is by turns meditative, desperate, and hopeful, this novel showcases Hunter’s considerable talents and range.”
“A haunting take on modern disaster…Prescient in its depiction of climate change induced catastrophe and timeless in its clear-eyed understanding of love.”
“A moving, wistful, and compelling debut.”
“[A] sharpened lens on motherhood’s apocalyptic-feeling joys and terrors and how they can form an all-encompassing world.”
“[Hunter’s] beautiful prose is spare, yet able to conjure every emotion in the reader from terror to wonder.”
“Riveting…Hunter’s writing on the human impact of climate change charges this slim poetic work of fiction with powerful dystopian weight…An exquisite paean to how we come back from the times that challenge us all.”
“A uniquely intimate tale of motherhood amid catastrophe.”
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