...a small and simple and delicately crafted tale, with aftershocks as long as the
end of the world.
From the Publisher, Radiant Press
"Marlen and Hilda Jorgensen’s family has received two significant pieces of news: one, Marlen has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Two, a cosmic blast is set to render humanity extinct within a matter of months. It seems the coming Christmas on their Saskatchewan farm will be their last."
The power and poignancy of this novel is not so much in the characters
and their exact circumstances or actions in the face of impending
destruction, but the emotion evoked by the text: just as they are facing
what might - or might not - be their last day, you, the reader, are
also suspended in that uncertainty. You trust you haven’t read this far
for nothing, that the book will come to its foreordained ending. But
what if it doesn’t? What if you turn the page and the yellow dissipates
from the sky and the gamma ray passes with minimal damage and the coffee
shop and grocery store reopen and somehow, some-when, Nora and Jacob
get their happy life together and Ole gets to grow up and introduce his
kids and grandkids to the arcade his own grandfather made for him at the
end of the world?
Or not.
Or not.
This is a mind-bending read where nothing is ever quite what it seems, and yet it starts so simply: with a girl abroad, missing her family back home. In the way that only a 19-year-old's recognition of something new and possible is portentous, Nora thinks she knows this stranger in Berlin, knows him as familiarly as she knows her childhood home even though she doesn’t remember him, has no idea he is her new boss, or even what his name is, at first.
Meanwhile, back home in a rural prairie hamlet, Marlen, Nora's father, has accidentally predicted the upcoming end of the world. He wrote a book about it, in the year leading up to his cancer diagnosis, and is waiting for the box of printed books to arrive in the mail before he springs the surprise on his family. But he doesn’t think anyone will read his masterwork now, because it’s too much like what is really happening in the world. He hasn't even told his wife, who grows increasingly fretful as The End approaches with no contact from Nora, no way to know if she will get home before the planes stop flying because too many pilots and mechanics and airport staff have stopped bothering to show up at work.
The relationships exist in the silences more than in what is said between characters. The parallels go deep: the 15-year old boy who thinks he’ll understand Life when he is 20; the 20 year-olds will when they are 30; their parents’ generation still groping toward understanding even as they watch THEIR parents losing the way forward, retreating into a past that no longer exists… And Nora and her boss, a new couple retreating forward into a future that will never exist
It’s all metaphorical until somebody starts to fry , until birds fall crispy from the sky. Metaphors for climate change being the actual, abrupt end of the world as we know it, that we are all ignoring except, ironically, those who write denialist blogs and share seemingly learned letters around to the credulous. It happens here too, someone claiming it's all a giant conspiracy and all the reader need do is have faith and be ready for the day after, when they'll emerge triumphant over their confused neighbours. These letters, like some current supposedly grassroots political movements, sow dissent among families and fracture the tenuous social cohesion of community groups that might otherwise band together to support each other and mitigate the psychological, if not the material, damage to the fabric of Society.
Literary/fictional quantum entangled characters, living a present that is unfolding both behind and ahead of them simultaneously as well as between Nora and her mother an ocean apart, and Jacob and his sister Anna also an ocean apart. But not between Ole and Hank and Irene all living on the same small rural area but entirely separate from each other
The floating from one character’s head to another may be disorienting
for some readers. The minutiae of characters’ moment by moment emotions
may repel those looking for the larger picture or some sense that
humanity is fighting back, making some plan to get a precious few out of
harm’s way.
And yet....
All acts, all objects...even money, on which we set such store most days...mean everything and nothing simultaneously. Holly cutouts in Berlin and painted ivy in Saskatchewan are visual symbols for the entwined yet prickly family relationships Small moments of shredded memory become present moments of great significance.
As the end of the world approaches, past entangles with present. If this were a movie, the teaspoon of salt spilling from Ole’s hand would fall in slow motion, each grain filmed falling and bouncing and falling again as the screen slowly faded to black. You'd sit up in the theatre or on your couch, gripping the arms or your dog and wondering uneasily, "Is this really real?".
As the end of the world approaches, past entangles with present. If this were a movie, the teaspoon of salt spilling from Ole’s hand would fall in slow motion, each grain filmed falling and bouncing and falling again as the screen slowly faded to black. You'd sit up in the theatre or on your couch, gripping the arms or your dog and wondering uneasily, "Is this really real?".
#novel #apocalypse #endoftheworld #Saskatchewan #Berlin #RiverStreetWrites #SuzyKrause
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