*Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Reading the synopsis of this book, I felt like this would be right up my street. A woman gives birth to her son just before the sea level rises with catastrophic consequences. However, I feel that this book was almost annoyingly short.

The concept that Megan Hunter started with is brilliant but it is not explored in enough detail. I feel like she was told she was only allowed to publish a certain number of pages and so she cut out all of the characters' names, leaving them with just initials, to save space and decided to race through the plot.

The writing was beautiful at points but it wasn't enough to make up for my overall feelings on this one. I was sadly disappointed by the end and don't think that this will stick with me.

This is more of a novella than a novel. It is a good read but too short. This is about the water rising on earth and a possible future existence. It is a thought provoking read. The initials made it harder to relate to the characters. I did not feel drawn into or caught up in the story at any point.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

A prose poem about motherhood and the end of the world. It took just a couple of hours to read but will stick with me for a long time.

I devoured this beautiful book in one sitting and found myself musing on motherhood in all of the weird and wonderful ways it can materialise. We follow our unnamed narrator as she gives birth to her son, Z, while the world around her slowly falls apart in the wake of a flood. The story is interspersed with excerpts from various creation myths and the overall effect is lyrical and ethereal. At heart, this is a book about being a mother - the specific fear that brings and the all encompassing love it creates. It deals with the realities of breastfeeding, the smell of a nappy and the protection of innocence in a world that is scarily recognisable, but not quite our own. All in all, this is a poignant and honest novel with true beauty at its core.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

A possible future, London (and possibly the rest of the world) has experienced flooding due to rising sea levels. A young woman gives birth and immediately finds that she, her baby and husband have to leave due to this humanitarian crisis. In an instant they become refugees in their own country, moving to areas of safety.

This slender novel deals primarily with motherhood, love and loss. Hunter writes well but I didn't connect at all with this novella, it lacked emotion, it felt very middle class, and the use of letters rather than names made it connect with me even more.

I loved this book! I thought it was moving and the format of the novel was interesting and mesmerising. My only criticism would be that it feels a little too sparse in areas.

"Z opens his eyes a little more every day. I am constantly aware of the complex process of breath: how the heart has to keep beating, to bring oxygen to the lungs in and out. Or something. It seems that at any moment it could stop. Sometimes he sleeps so quietly it seems that he has gone. We mostly lie in R’s old childhood bedroom, now with double bed and Moses basket creaking with Z’s every move. The news rushes past downstairs like a flow of traffic. Even our flat there underwater doesn’t make it real. Z is real with his tiny cat skull and sweet-swelling crap. The news is rushing by. It is easy to ignore. Every morning when I wake up the sheets are wet. I have wet myself from my breasts: I am lying in milk. Z tosses and the wicker stirs. R is already out of bed. If I listen carefully enough I can hear him hammering in the garden. Words float up the stairs like so many childhood letter magnets. Endgame, civilization, catastrophe, humanitarian."

This book takes as its epigraph, a quote from TS Eliot “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is a beginning. The end is where we start from” and uses it as the inspiration for a ruthlessly pared back and fragmentary novella/prose poem, set in a dystopian future where London is submerged by unexpectedly catastrophic sea level rises (the end) just as the unnamed female narrator gives birth (the beginning).

This tale is woven through with italicised excerpts from mythological and religious texts around creation/flood and end times.

The book is only around 125 generously spaced pages – the quotes with which I have started and ended my review are around 2% of the entire book and also convey much of my sense of the novel: the use of letter for names; the oblique treatment of the unfolding environmental catastrophe and the sense that it is simply too unreal to take in, and the attempt to convey it by wordlists; by contrast the sense that reality can be grounded in a concentration on the physicality of a baby and of being a mother; the use (with mixed success) of unusual similes; the concentration on the physicality of a baby and of being a mother.

A haunting book - one which succeeds for me more as an oblique meditation on being a new parent than as a climate change novel.

"The idea came from nowhere. For weeks it was not there, and then it was everywhere. It came from the distance, or from sleep, from those nipple head-twist urine-musk times we spend in the dark. Any chance they get, my dreams unfurl in their allotted small space. They are origami, they are Japanese pod hotels. They fit it all in. The idea came as a miniaturized image, a crisp packet in the oven. It is all I need."