Megan Hunter's first novel can be read as an homage to motherhood. Pregnancy and a child's growth and the bonds of baby and child are vivid and visceral, honest and truthful. I knew this journey.
"Pregnancy was the great adventure." The End We Start From
It is a dystopian story of a climate catastrophe causing mass migration, refugees seeking safety. Soon after the birth of their baby, a family flees rising flood waters that are overwhelming London. The father takes them north. As panic and disorder follows, the family retreat further from civilization. They find shelter in a refugee camp. They become separated.
There is a layer of symbolic meaning. The title, The End We Start From, comes from lines in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. It is my favorite Eliot poem.
What we call the beginning is often the endAnd to make an end is to make a beginning.The end is where we start from.The story is told in a few short sentences grouped together and separated by asterisks, as if we hear the mother's spoken thoughts. Interspersed are italicized sentences, seeming quotations, that relate snippets of creation stories. Many readers will recognize the Judeo-Christian references to the Creation of the World, Adam and Eve, and Noah and the Flood.
Universal archetypes appear: references to world Creation Myths of emergence from water or a world egg, the symbolism of womb and a child's birth, the creation of land and mankind, myths of paradise.
The structure of the novel may confuse some readers who prefer a strong narrative or character-driven story. But, if they give the novel a chance, these readers can relate to the story of a mother's love and the joys and concerns of motherhood.
The need to leave home for safety is, sadly, also too universal. Just consider the recent hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires.
And, Hunter has another message for us: When our lives seem to be torn asunder, and we have lost everything, there comes a child taking its first step. We know what we have lost. This child only will know the world as it is. The child is a new beginning.
Life is not linear, going from worse to better. Life is nothing but endings and starting over. We lose a loved one, a career, a home, mobility.
A child is born. Flood waters arose and covered London. People flee and gather to survive. The child grows. The waters recede. The people return. Nothing is the same. Life goes on.
I truly believe that Earth is changing and humans will suffer. Local climate changes will mean some crops fail and other will thrive, new species will move in and others will move out. Humans will migrate. There will be social, political, and economic stress. There will be violence and disorder. There will be an ending to the time we have flourished in, this interglacial period. There will be a new beginning, one born in violence of the death of all we have known. Somewhere, a baby will take it's first step into it's mother's arms.
It is the end we start from.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley and an ARC through Goodreads giveaway in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
The End We Start From
by Megan Hunter
Grove Atlantic/Grove Press
Pub Date: November 7, 2017
Hardcover $22.00
ISBN: 9780802126894
Hear T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets read by Alec Guinness at
https://soundcloud.com/tomrobinson/4quartets
