I have read a lot of books this year, and this is definitely one of my favourites. An usual concept beautifully written. I was absorbed.
The characters, the two time frames and the setting were well portrayed and I couldn’t wait to get back to it when life interfered. I would have read it in one setting if I could.
Don’t let the unusual description put you off. This book feels real and relatable. I absolutely loved it.
Thank you to the author, her publisher and @NetGalley for the opportunity to read #TheStanding. It is a very special book and I will be recommending it to everyone I know.

This is one of the best books I've read recently. Having just read another book about a whale and impending doom I was a bit unsure why I'd started another one. But it is very different and amazingly good.

The writing is beautiful and feels realistic. I won't spoil the plot but how the author weaves different scenes from Before and After that have related threads is very subtlety and cleverly done.

A lot to think about what it means to be human, how we find strength in stories, legends, society and in ourselves. Despite some of the bleak subject matter it is uplifting.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for a free advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Really enjoyed the first half of this, but I felt like the ending didn't have enough payoff/the last half didn't develop far enough. Very well written however, and I'm sure there are big things to come.

I liked this. It's beautifully written and very engaging. Have always loved 'survivalist' stories and this has a shipwreck feel, twinned with dystopia. Really interesting genre blend.

What a remarkable book! Primarily set in a post-apocalyptic world, the story is told between two narratives, the before and after. In the before, we meet Ruth struggling with her relationship with Alex and nothing to look forward to and in the after we follow Ruth in her struggle to begin her new life surviving a global disaster. The book is so well-written and the two narratives are so smart and I love how they connect in the end. This is an unforgettable story, of love, hope and survival. It's haunting, compelling, heartbreaking and beautiful, highly recommended!

Thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for this copy.

What an absolutely stunning book. Primarily focusing on Ruth, there are two intertwined timelines: one of Ruth's life in London in what becomes known as the 'Before' (predominantly the last year of it and what led her to go to New Zealand), and the post-apocalyptic one that focuses on her new life and survival in New Zealand with fellow survivor, Nik.

This isn't an action-packed story. It is about love and family and friendships and motherhood and relationships - good and bad - as much as it is about survival and the post-apocalyptic world Ruth and Nik find themselves in. (If you want an action-packed narrative then this probably isn't the book for you.) But it's just wonderfully crafted - both in the way the timelines weave together and the writing. I know I'm just gushing now, but I just really loved this book.

I can see why people have recommended this to fans of Station Eleven (and echo them). But I also think if you like slow burn books about people then this is worth a go, even if you aren't normally drawn to dystopian/post-apocalyptic literature.

An easy 5/5, one of my favourite reads of the year so far.

The Stranding by Kate Sawyer
This debut novel by Kate Sawyer is written in alternating chapters, The Before and The After. It is written in the first person and deals with Ruth, who is living in an unstable world and burying her head in the sand about what is happening around her.
In the opening chapter we read about the death of a whale on a beach in New Zealand. Ruth has moved to New Zealand to escape a failing, claustrophobic relationship and to fulfil her dream of working with whales. The apocalyptic events, which she has been closing her ears to, have become a reality and we see her climbing into the mouth of the whale with a stranger to escape the devastation.
This is an intelligent novel about the end of the world but also about the indomitable quality of the human spirit and the desire to survive against all odds.
It is a book I will be recommending to others and I would like to thank the author, the publishers and Net Galley for the opportunity to read it in return for an honest review.

I won’t deny that there’s a devastating event that occurs right at the heart of this book. It’s tied up with the whale in an unusual way and sets the tone for what happens to Ruth during the rest of her life. If it had been written differently, it could have been unbearable to read. But Sawyer’s beautiful, poetic prose does exactly what literary writing should do – it supports the story by deepening the emotional impact and giving us an immersive, sensory experience. This isn’t instead of a cracking plot and well depicted, believable characters, which happens all too often when the writing is at such a wonderful standard – it’s in addition to those other vital ingredients.

The result is a stunning book that hooked me in and had me reading till my eyes ached. There were times when I cried and times when I held my breath – until I finally surfaced, feeling lightheaded and slightly euphoric. Though with that familiar sense of loss that there was no more time to spend in this story. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, as while the blurb gives a sense of what happens – there is so much more that the reader should discover on Sawyer’s terms. Her crafting of this plot worked perfectly for me – and I loved how I increasingly came to be more and more in Ruth’s corner as the story wore on. And if you pick this one up and find that in the beginning, you don’t like her all that much – do persevere for a bit longer. I promise that she will grow on you…

This is a remarkable book by an author who knows exactly what she is doing. It’s an ambitious book – to define the life of a character through such a major event and I don’t know many that could pull it off. Sawyer does more than that – she has created a highly memorable read that will stay with me for a very long time. And although we are only just over halfway through the year, I do know The Stranding has already made my list of Outstanding Reads of 2021. Very highly recommended. While I obtained an arc of The Stranding from the publishers via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
10/10

This book took me by surprise and then took me hostage. I was afraid for it in the beginning, afraid that it was going to suffer at the hands of comparison. Having recently read Last One at the Party, for a proportion of the book I couldn't help but look at the two side by side; both apocalyptic, both with female protagonists seemingly ill-equipped to deal with their situation - but somewhere in the middle, this book took hold of me in ways that didn't become clear until the very end. Reading the last pages, I had goosebumps (this happens rarely) and I was left with a lump in my throat, the likes of which takes time to disappear and as I sit and write this now, the emotion of it is still raw.

A dual-narrative story, we have Ruth. Before the event and after it. We never get to understand what the actual event really was, because Ruth chooses not to know, or to understand what could be happening around her - and although unsettling (it is human nature to want to know what has happened, to understand what could be out there) it isn't what is important. What this captivating, original book portrays so well is what humans are capable of when all that is known is swept away and what is left are only the remnants of another world and a brutal need for survival in a new unrecognizable one. When it would appear that all hope is lost, love and trust in the human spirit creates new hope and a reason for being.

Having witnessed Ruth's life fall apart by degrees in the 'Before', through Kate Sawyer's quiet and profound prose we enjoy her finding a new sense of purpose and strength that surprises even her in the 'After'.

I enjoyed the changes of tone in the two timelines; the Before, feels more bold, brash - Ruth's friends and family are thrown at us, we see them in all their glory, we know them. Yet the After, is where the real magic happens, it is pared back, but written with such emotional depth that you truly get to understand what it means to be human. You study Nik and he is slowly revealed, while at the same time the true essence of Ruth bubbles to the surface and leads you to a point where her two timelines come together in such an emotional release of acceptance that it completely took my breath away.

There is a subtle transfer of narrative in the After too, it is done with such a delicate hand, you barely notice it as time goes on , such intelligent, intuitive, writing - it works so well. I can't wait to see what Kate Sawyer writes next, a fabulously flawless debut.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

It took me a few chapters to get into the feeling of this book but then I was hooked. I loved the time shifts used for alternate chapters, such a clever way to tell the story. I'm always slightly wary of the 'going back to nature will save humanity' trope but this was very well done and really the emphasis was on finding where you belong, love and family rather than nature. It's a really interesting debut and I can't wait to see what Sawyer does next.

A story with two timelines: Ruth living in London, in an unhealthy relationship, and years later, after an apocalyptic event, when we find her sheltering inside the body of a whale with another survivor called Nik. It's a subtle and interesting slow-burn of a story, very original and intriguing.

I loved the opening premise of surviving the apocalypse by hiding inside a stranded whale, and the rest of the novel was just as powerful. An arresting, life-affirming story of life after the end of the world, and an unlikely love story that works perfectly.

I try not to compare books if possible, but I did slightly get Station Eleven vibes early on - end of the world as we know it, two time periods of before and after - but this book is nothing alike really. It focuses on Ruth’s life: in England leading up to being in New Zealand, and in New Zealand post-hiding-inside-a-whale. It has tension and joy and hope for all the narrow focus. Mostly her time with two men but it is a female-led book and I loved the way the author showed the changing state of how she felt at each point from the third person, and whale throughout everything. The chapters are short and very readable.

One extra note. A certain thing does happen. With a lover, and Ruth is able to speak up. It was in the news recently and this is the first book I’ve come across to mention such a thing and what happens after. I’m trying not to give spoilers here but I’d like to say that I’m relieved it was included as we need things that happen in relationships to be spoken about, and acknowledged in the public sphere as unhealthy.

With thanks to NetGalley for the copy.

This beautiful debut was a complete surprise and I'm so grateful to @coronetbooks @hodderstoughton and #netgalley for the digital copy in exchange for my honest review. I'm going to try and avoid discussing any plot details, as I truly fell in love with this narrative as it took shape and I want any of you to be able to share that experience!

This novel is a compelling study of the human capacity to hope, survive and to love, even as the world turns to dust around us.

Alternating across two interwoven timelines, our narrator, Ruth, finds herself dissatisfied with life and desperately ignoring an ever-approaching global disaster. Ultimately, this threat gives her the perspective to re-evaluate the life she's living and pursue her forgotten passions while she still can. This is how we come to meet her in New Zealand, trying to save a beached whale at the end of the world.

We drift through moments of Ruth's lost past and emerge with her into a new world. I'd expected the moment of intersection between these two worlds to take place at the end of the narrative, but it continues on, arguably ending at a new beginning full of new hope.

My expectation demonstrates the very human need for certainty and clarification; what happened to the world and can there be anything left to hope for in it? Sawyer doesn't offer definitive answers but, as Ruth comes to understand, nothing is ever definite. Life will always surprise you.

At times, this novel reminded me of The Road and The New Wilderness with its incredibly accomplished and nuanced emotional depth. While, of course, there are elements of dystopia, focus never floats too far from the flawlessly portrayed humanity at its heart.

I'd urge you to pick up a copy of this extremely moving debut. I'll definitely be investing in a copy to cherish and revisit whenever I'm in need of some perspective.

Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for providing me with an Advanced Readers Copy in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: 4.5/5 stars

"Everything needs an ending. We are the end.”

In the shadow of an ongoing pandemic, post-apocalyptic fiction seems to have undergone a rapid evolution: bleak apocalypses like The Road or The Stand are falling out of favour, to make room for more hopeful stories of humanity and resilience against all odds. My favourite has always been Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, but I’m happy to now be able to add The Stranding to that list as well.

The Stranding departs from, and repeatedly spirals back around towards “The End”. On a empty beach in New Zealand, two strangers take shelter in the carcass of a beached whale in a desperate attempt at survival, as an apocalyptic wave of light devours human life as we knew it. What follows is a deeply evocative and haunting story about the blossoming dynamic between the (possibly) only two survivors of a worldwide catastrophe and their tentative steps to adapt, start over, and turn “surviving” back into “living” again.

The novel is written in alternating chapters, jumping back and forth between two time lines: Before and After. In the Before, we follow Ruth’s life leading up to and towards the end. A claustrophobic relationship, an unstable political and environmental climate and many other relatable anxieties of modern day life lead her to the beach where she finds the stranded whale on that faithful day.
In the After, we follow Ruth and Nik as they emerge from whale and build a new life from the literal bones of their old world.

With so much skill in both narrative structure and prose, the fact that this is Kate Sawyers debut novel boggles my mind. Their were so many ways this novel could have stranded (pardon the pun) along the way: the transverse timelines could have been confusing, the story incohesive and the survival elements could have been at risk of being overly romanticized. Yet Sawyer navigated it all so skilfully that the end result is a debut novel very close to perfection. I deeply hope to see more of her work in the future.

Final Verdict:
The Stranding is a beautifully crafted allegorical tale of survival, perseverance and the acceptance of change that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

Such a beautiful book! The imagery was fascinating, the writing was magical and I think everyone should check it out! It was a little slow to get into, but ultimately I found myself really really enjoying it!

Ruth lives in the heart of the city. Working, drinking, falling in love: the rhythm of her vivid and complicated life there is set against a background hum of darkening news reports from which she deliberately turns away. As a new relationship becomes increasingly claustrophobic, and the discussions of impending political crisis are harder to avoid, she starts to dream of water; of escaping entwining tentacles through deep blue seas. She sets out to the other side of the globe to find that vision of freedom, and to decide who she wants to be when she returns. But when she arrives at her destination, she finds instead that the world, and life, she left behind no longer exists.

While the book deals with a dystopian future of the world's end, it chooses to focus on the personal response to survival, and what that really means for an individual, aside from its literal meaning. As opposed to other apocalyptic fiction, the end of the world is not a character, it is just the environment in which the characters can choose to fully realize themselves.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

3.5/5.

I requested this book after reading a blurb somewhere on book Twitter. I was immediately grabbed by the premise of the main character essentially entering the body of a whale and emerging into a completely changed world.

This is a truly accomplished debut novel. The story of Ruth and Nik's survival following some sort of apocalyptic event is interspersed with events from Ruth's past. We see her drifting though her life "before", dissatisfied and not pursuing her passions, whilst increasingly concerning reports arise in the background about world events. A long since forgotten love of whales brings her to New Zealand and a whole new life that she could not have envisaged.

This is the third book I've read in 2021 with a female lead characters, by a female author where some sort of apocalyptic event occurs, the others being Last One at the Party and End of Men. They have all been wonderful and they have all been very different. The Stranding was another take on this. We never quite know exactly what happened and again, like the other two, it was good to see the aftermath of such an event told through the eyes of a woman.

The book is at times heartbreaking but is also full of hope and is a study of what we think love is and what we actually discover it to be. After such an impressive debut, I can't wait to see what the author does next.

I got approved for this book on NetGalley a long time ago and I’ve been thinking about it pretty much ever since. I finally got the chance to read it and I think I’m going to be thinking about it for a while longer!

Ruth is a primary school teacher in London and she lives a pretty typical young-ish Londoner’s lifestyle. She purposefully avoids the news while falling in love with a man who is becoming increasingly suffocating. Something eventually gives and Ruth books a flight to New Zealand, where she hopes to find freedom and fulfillment in the wonders of the ocean and the creatures who live beneath its depths. On her arrival, something happens that changes the face of humanity forever.

The writing is very poetic in places and it fits with the subject matter beautifully. It can be read as a simple story about two people who were in fact in the wrong place at the wrong time when global disaster strikes or as a story of two people who found their inner peace and purpose in the strangest of circumstances. It really felt like there was some great message about humans really only need love and sustenance to survive and I felt the true impact of that at the end.

On the shore where a whale has tragically beached, Ruth meets a photographer called Nik. As the story unfolds, we learn little bits of Nik’s previous life but I wasn’t sure I ever really got to know him properly. However, neither does Ruth, so knowing Nik without really knowing him felt very authentic. It was almost like I knew the most important parts of him -he is kind, protective, observant and resourceful.

The book is constructed via alternate chapters depicting Ruth’s life in the Before and in the After. In the After chapters, she often reflects on her old life -a life that will reflect the lives of so many of us. Most anxiety sufferers are told to avoid the news because of its ability to exacerbate stress and fear, so I completely understand Ruth’s aversion to it. She wonders whether she would have been better prepared for what was coming if she had seen the warning signs but of course, this kind of thinking is always futile but incredibly relatable.

In the Before, Ruth has an amazing friend called Fran and when I realised that it was almost impossible for Ruth to see her again in the After, my heart sank. They have such a wonderful friendship and it was so touching to see that Fran was clearly still in Ruth’s thoughts years later, when everything has gone. At the end of everything, it’s only really our memories of real love that remain.

There is also commentary on the potential pitfalls of being a woman in a relationship with a man. Ruth’s boyfriend Alex is incredibly demeaning and tries his best to make Ruth feel very small. Although it seems subtle, it is mental abuse and Ruth’s desire to be free of him is yet more evidence of that. I really hope that readers who are with someone similar to Alex realise that they would definitely be better off running to the other side of the world to get away from them.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the book was realising how universal and timeless certain human things are. I don’t want to touch on any spoilers but what it means to be and to grow up physically female is explored through two very special, incredible characters. I suppose it made me realise that no matter what happens to the world that we inhabit and how drastically the way we live changes, as long as there are living humans, some things will literally always remain constant.

There is so much thought surrounding the weird ways that humans think and operate. Overall, it caused me to think about how arbitrary the rules that we live by are and many of the things that we’re told to be wary of really aren’t going to harm us. The nature of sticking to what we know is potentially very damaging to true human freedom and fulfillment, which is precisely why Ruth and so many other people feel the need to see places so different from their homes.

At the end of the book, Ruth realises that all the things that used to weigh her mind down and have a huge impact on her life really don’t matter too much. I know that this echoes the words of a lot of very old people, particularly women, who only realise how amazing they are towards the end of their lives. Self-hatred and uncertainty are the main causes for humans not living their lives to the full and that’s never more clear than in the ending of The Stranding.

The final chapter touched my heart in such a profound way and tears were definitely in my eyes. I had to lay down and stare at the ceiling for a while after I finished because the beauty and true meaning of the final pages needed time to sink in. It reverted back to the gorgeous lyricism at the start of the book and the cyclical nature of the narrative reflected the perpetual ring of human life.

‘It was love that made her life worth living.’

The Stranding is a very well-written, thought-provoking book that will certainly burrow its way into your heart. It’s about being a woman, living a life that fulfills you and finding out what is left when everything else has vanished from the world. It’s allegorical, soaring and very cinematic in places. An incredible story that just goes on and on, much like we do.

Where most dystopian stories are rife with the usual tensions of people murdering each other for resources, zombies, etc, this book takes a more quiet, meandering journey. The story is told in two timelines where we follow Ruth: Before the catastrophe and After the catastrophe. What the catastrophe is, exactly, we're never told. Ruth avoids news at all costs Before, and After all we really know is something happened and the whole world was flooded with...something. Fire? Radiation? Bombs? No idea.

Before is mostly concerned with Ruth's relationship with Alex. It becomes clear to the reader very early on that it's a pretty toxic relationship, but most of the Before timeline is spent following Ruth as she discovered that for herself.

In the After timeline, Ruth and Nik, the only two survivors in the area, try to survive by scavenging, fishing and farming--the usual post-apocalyptic stuff. But where you might expect something eventful happening, nothing much does. The story never moves beyond the area they start the After timeline in, and other than the catastrophe, the book is uneventful. It's all just glimpses of Ruth's life without ever delving deep enough for real character growth. It was a pleasant enough read, but I missed some meat to the story.

I will say that the beginning of this book, specifically the parts with the whale, definitely made me sit up and pay attention. It's also a fairly easy read.

There is one part in particular that really bothered me:

"‘Hello? Can anybody hear me?’

He heard that. They watch carefully for any movement among the mounds of rubble. They hold their breath, trying to listen, straining to hear beyond the high-pitched ringing in their ears. A few minutes pass and there is no response. No movement. No noise. Or, at least, none they can hear.

Ruth pulls up her mask and walks closer to the rubble, but Nik softly touches her upper arm. She turns back to him. He is shaking his head. She nods, and they turn from the rubble and start to walk into the town."

You'd expect something to come of this, but nothing does. It's never mentioned again and never explored, and feels very indicative of the rest of the book.