Review: The End We Start From

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 Stars

Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a prose poem (yes, that's a thing) that tells the story of a near-apocalyptic flood submerging London during the last weeks of an unnamed woman's pregnancy. An older first-time mother (geriatric primigravida), the woman narrates the harrowing story of her delivery and shortly thereafter evacuates with her husband. Eventually separated from her husband, she travels through several evacuation camps and is ultimately able to return home after the harrowing first year of her son "Z's" life. Hunter is an award-winning British poet and it shows in the elegiac tone of this novella, which takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding (Four Quartets). This is a beautiful 140-page novella. Those afraid of another story of dystopian horror should take comfort in the further lines from Eliot's opus:

"And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well"

The spare, poetic tone of this short book may not be for everyone, but it was a moving read for me.

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