INDIE EDITOR’S CHOICE: FICTION
THE END WE START FROM Megan Hunter, Grove Press, 978-0-8021-2689-4
Poetic and succinct, Megan Hunter’s debut The End We Start From is an etiological exercise for a climate-changed world. An expectant mother narrates, planning a beautiful entrance for her child despite rising tides and the imminent possibility that the family will have to flee. Nothing is as simple as a calm water birth in a time when the sea is swallowing the land. Her son is born into increasing chaos, and both are left vulnerable and ill-equipped for the terrifyingly different landscape. The power of Hunter’s story is both in its stark prose, which undulates and captures searing images as poems might otherwise do, and in the connection of its future to the past. Italicized bits of origin tales accompany forays into the unknown. Settings, from remote houses to islands to refugee camps, are rendered with precision, and prove to be a mixture of alien and familiar. Though the story is marked by incredible loss, the hope beyond the devastation is worth holding on for. Hunter’s is an uncommon disaster tale—lovely, intimate, and foreboding.
“… an uncommon disaster tale— lovely, intimate, and foreboding.”