Jessi Greengrass' previous novel, Sight, was an impressive exploration of being mother, daughter and granddaughter. The High House retains this focus on family, although parents have a largely peripheral role, and relationships in the face of climate catastrophe. The novel is very good on the development of these relationships, between people forced together by emergency, and the beauty and destructiveness of nature, as well as the energy and inquisitiveness of children as seen in the central (and very charming) figure of Pauly. The shifting narrative and temporal perspectives worked well for me, although some reviewers are right to point out that Sally's and Caro's narrative voices are much less clearly distinguished than the descriptions of their characters. The narrative manages to be propulsive and digressive, which is quite a trick to pull off, and rarely if ever succumbs to the cliches of the fiction of approaching apocalypse.

About halfway through the book, Sally, the most reflective of the narrators, says that "any loss, however it might be of benefit, is still a loss". That sums of the novel up well, which captures beautifully the sadness of the loss and our foolishness in assuming everything will somehow work out alright. That makes it a powerful and important addition to the literature of climate crisis.

The High House is a post-apocalyptic novel by Jessie Greengrass, published in 2021. It tells the story of Caro, a young woman who lives in a remote farmhouse with her younger half-brother, Pauly, and their elderly guardian, Grandy. The world outside the High House is flooded and inhospitable, and the three of them must learn to survive on their own. Not usually my cup of tea but I enjoyed it.

Set in the near future, the High House is a bleak but heartwarming story of a thrown-together "family" trying to survive in extreme circumstances caused by climate change.

As a climate scientist, Francesca realises she is running out of time to act in the face of impending danger. She creates an ark at their holiday home and employs locals Sally and her Grandpy to restore the veg patch while she sets about storing provisions and making the property as self-sufficient as possible.

Cara has no idea about these plans, and when their parents are killed in an horrific hurricane, she finds herself responsible for bringing her much younger brother to The High House. Once there she is shocked to find Sally and Cara already living there and discovers what has been consuming Francesca's attention and keeping her away from home for so long.

Very realistic, and a depressing mirror of the consequences of our current inaction.

“This was when it was still the beginning of things, when we were still uncertain, and it was still possible to believe that nothing whatever was wrong, bar an unusual run of hot Julys and January storms.”


Cli-fi at its finest. This post apocalyptic novel set in Suffolk imagines a world primarily submerged underwater. Thanks to badass climate scientist Francesca, her children Carlo and Pauly find themselves presented with the gift of survival; a fully equipped farmhouse on a hill, complete with mill, generator and enough food to last them for the foreseeable future.

Told through the eyes of the children and alternating between past and present - or ‘before’ and ‘after’ - Greengrass explores how we make and forge friendships in impossible circumstances, how the unthinkable becomes commonplace, and the fragility of surviving in a desolate world.

The characters penned here were exceptional, and Grandy (a local employed to help the children survive) was exceptionally heartwarming in the tender way he cared for others.

Ultimately, this novel was pacy, relevant and immersive. Greengrass has penned a future so realistic, it’s painfully easy to imagine her novel as a prophetic imagining of our impending future.

Lots of food for thought in this impactful apocalyptic novel. The High House is where climate scientist Francesca and her husband create a safe haven for their son and daughter in preparation for the climate disaster they have predicted and are working hard to prepare for. As the weather becomes increasingly extreme and unpredictable we are given a clear picture of the bleak consequences. Melancholic but beautifully written. Thank you to Net Galley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Set in a not-so distant future when climate changes and natural disasters are common. Francesca is a scientist, and climate activist. When she inherits the High house fromher uncle, she begins to view it as a place where her family can stay safe in the new situation of the earth being ravaged by weather changes. She takes help from two locals, Sally and her Grandy, to maintain the high house for her children. It reads like literary fiction, not of what is yet to come (or what is already here). Great language and great descriptions that make you feel sad for some reason. Read this if you enjoy lit fic with good sense of craft

The High House by Jessie Greengrass.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

After hearing that Jessie Greengrass' first novel was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2018, I knew I had to read her second novel when it came out this year.

The High House is an apocalyptic novel set in Suffolk, in a world where climate catastrophes have almost wiped out human existence as we know it.

The writing in this book is spectacular, and I don't know how Greengrass did it but she really brought this world set in the future so well into the present. Something I really appreciated in this book is how the climate crisis isn't presented as an opportunity for the author to state their views on the topic, it's just given to us as a reality of the world that our characters are living in, and we watch in awe as they try to survive through it.

Considering our main group of characters aren't all related to each other, there's still a really strong sense of family to this novel. I also loved that we got to really understand the types of characters we wouldn't usually get in an apocalyptic novel (a young child and an old man).

Despite there being devastation all around and bleakness from start to finish, this book and its characters really warmed my heart and I can't wait to read what else the author has in store for us.

Many thanks to @_swiftpress for approving me to read this via @netgalley. This book is out now.

"The High House" in question is a property inherited by Francesca, a scientist who specialises in climate change. Sure of an imminent climate disaster, Francesca and her husband John devote all their spare time to stocking the house for their children, Caro and Paul. They make sure that the property is as self-sufficient as possible, and hire a local man to keep an eye on the place.

When disaster strikes, Caro and Paul make it to the High House, where they remain with Grandy and his Granddaughter Sal. The story is told from the POV of Caro, Sal and Paul (his chapters were unnecessary imvho).

This is depressing AF. It's sad, and it's hard to read. I didn't think the story flowed all that well (pardon the horrific pun) with the chopping and changing from character to character. I thought it would have been in a more standard fictional book style as opposed to a multiple POV novel.

It was sad, it was depressing, it was bleak.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley.

Not for me, but well written. Would be interested in other titles by the same author though.

Cover and blurb did a good job and encouraging me to pick it up though so kudos to those decision makers for this book!

This is a bleak, eerie and uncomfortable read as a natural disaster to the extent of life no longer being the way we are accustomed to could happen. I was left feeling cold at the end.
With the whole premise being highly possible, that's what kept my attention, but why did Pauls mother not plan for herself and her husband, Caro's dad to be at the High House? I didn't particularly like any of the characters and I found it frustrating that Caro called Paul, Pauly with no explanation. It felt odd, as her relationship with her half brother was odd. Did she care for him or did she just feel like she had no choice but to look after him? I found Sally cold too and her grandfather could have been more developed as I am sure he was meant to have been the glue to this odd group of people who have been brought together by a disater. I ended this book with a lot of questions that I know won't be answered, but maybe this is the whole point? The thought of what happens when the world is ending is not something anyone has the answers to, thus the concept of the book is meant to be uncomfortable and cold.

I was a little sceptical when I first started reading this as it’s not my usual read. However, I stuck with it and quite enjoyed it. I was expecting a slightly different ending but was glad it ended the way it did.

I found this to be a really gentle version of - what is otherwise - an 'eco-disaster' novel. The characters were absorbing and the plot was good enough to keep me going, I liked how the author weaved in all the current thinking on sustainability through interspersed sentences. I.e. they make 'compost', watch 'holiday-lets' take over a village, comment on the 'too-long summers' or 'crisp packets out of hedges'. I also liked the writing style.

Bleak but beautiful. Jessie Greengrass presents a terrifyingly plausible vision of the future in this quiet but powerful cli-fi story. Caro and her younger brother Pauly find themselves returning to the High House following a desperate, distant phonecall from their father and Pauly's Climate scientist mother Francesca. Soon there are reports of disaster where they were staying. When they arrive at the fondly remembered holiday home they find that Francesca has created a well-stocked fortress against the coming catastophe, self-powered and prepared for rising waters and dramatic temperatures. There they encounter Sal and Grandy who have helped Francesca prepare.

Greengrass writes in a languid, melancholic prose that really conjures the spirit of this place which was once a holiday utopia and has now become a haven and, sometimes, a prison. The voices of Caro and Sal are so strong and textured that I was swept up in their parallel narratives as they journey towards one another at the High House. The only slightly sour note was Pauly's section. His relationship with the two women is central to the story, with Caro more of a mother than an older sister and Sal a source of comfort when Caro's resilience falters. But when he takes the reins of the story he feels far less developed as an independent personality and this flatness knocked the narrative slightly off-kilter. Nevertheless, it's a beautifully written work and Greengrass's ability to build her setting is worth savouring.

A departure from earlier work, The High House’s the product of Jesse Greengrass’s desire to write a more “novelly novel,” in other words a character-based piece with a conventional format. At its heart The High House’s an exploration of the possible consequences of catastrophe sparked by largescale climate change. It’s a fairly well-crafted piece that focuses on a small band of survivors eking out an existence in the wake of an apocalyptic, climate-related event. These are Caro, her younger step-brother Pauly, Sally and her grandfather Grundy. They’re brought together by Caro’s stepmother Francesca a globally-renowned, climate change activist/scientist and one of the few who realises the world’s well past the tipping-point that marks certain calamity. As a way of ensuring some kind of future for her small son, Francesca prepares what many reviews refer to as an ark, – although the ark reference sidesteps obvious similarities between Francesca’s plans and the wealthy, egocentric, doomsday preppers profiled in magazines like the New Yorker, so evading pertinent questions about inequality versus privilege in Greengrass's scenario. Although, to be fair, these issues are briefly referenced in Greengrass’s story. This refuge’s the High House, secluded, relatively sheltered, its position and Francesca’s provisions enable her carefully selected group to evade a flood of biblical proportions – inspired by Greengrass’s interest in the North Sea flood of 1953 which laid waste to whole swathes of Europe including parts of England.

The key features of the period preceding Greengrass's flood are all too familiar: species death on an increasing scale, bizarre weather conditions, dwindling insect populations, and gradually-encroaching environmental blight. For me, and I suspect many other readers, Greengrass's portrayal of her characters’ response to these potentially cataclysmic shift’s equally recognisable. To take one example Caro, Francesca’s stepdaughter, is unable to deal with her fear of what the future might hold so she tries not to think about it: her mental state perpetually suspended between overwhelming anxiety and deflection/denial’s particularly well-realised, although what Greengrass’s aiming for in chronicling this is less clear to me. I’m not sure if Greengrass is offering her readers an elegy in anticipation of certain doom, an oblique stab at some kind of wake-up call or, perhaps, a cathartic means of rehearsing through fiction an inevitably bleak, real-life outcome. If Greengrass's piece’s intended to arouse some sort of practical reaction I’m not convinced it’ll have any actual impact beyond brief jolts of recognition. My perspective’s not entirely based on Greengrass’s vision, frankly I’m not persuaded that cli-fi fiction's politically significant in any concrete sense. I don't see people reading this, then laying it down and rushing out to join Extinction Rebellion or any of the groups actively working to avert looming environmental devastation.

Greengrass’s story touches on important issues around capitalism, the corporatisation of the countryside, farming and food chains but these are awkwardly tangled up with - what might be perceived - as more conservative messages about heritage and the preservation of traditional rural communities. These lost communities are partly embodied by Grundy. He’s a slightly stock, sage elder who teaches the others how to live off the land. He’s sketchily presented and it seemed strange that such a central figure’s the only one not given a direct voice, unlike Sally, Caro and Pauly. He’s also a puzzling character since he can so easily be read as symbolic of age-old patriarchal wisdom which is jarring in an otherwise woman-centred piece. One in which the intimate and the broadly maternal are held up as beacons of hope. In interviews about her inspirations for The High House Greengrass mentions vintage post-apocalyptic fiction, elsewhere she’s talked about her fascination with John Christopher’s The Death of Grass and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. One thing I particularly liked about The High House was the unexpected pairing of something verging on contemporary Hampstead novel with more popular tropes tracing back to classic, post-apocalyptic SF - seen in this way the novel made a lot more sense. So, despite my general reservations, including those about a relatively elite group standing for humanity yet again, some aspects of this were unexpectedly appealing. The characters’ voices could be more distinctive but other positives were Greengrass’s supple prose style and her vivid, richly textured, descriptive passages. These were the redeeming features which drew me in and were enough to hold my attention throughout.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Swift Press for a digital review copy

An excellent but depressing novel: the prospect (reality) of climate change is terrifyingly well observed. It manages to describe real moments of joy in relationships to counter the state of the world.

I am not often in the mood to pick up a novel about climate change disaster. I fear it will make me sad and pessimistic. And I also fear it may be badly done.

In this case I am glad I read it. It is indeed quite a bleak novel but also a very good and well-written one. There is warmth too, and round characters. It managed to make me reflect on all that would be lost if we reach a tipping point.

It is about life during a climate-change induced apocalypse, where floods and superstorms are destroying civilisation, faster than most expected. In short, a group of four people try to survive in their High House, safe on a hill near what was once an English beach. They are well-prepared by an environmentalist who saw disaster coming, but still life is tough, precarious and psychologically almost unbearable. All these characters are well-drawn and some really came to life for me.

We know from the start what has happened and then are being told how it happened from the different perspectives of our three protagonists. This structure works really well for dramatic effect.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Swift Press for an arc

I liked the premise of the High House (but felt uncomfortable when I started reading it as I sat on a beach in the Uk in September). The plausible/possible plot line was very Margaret Atwood/ Handmaids Tail-esque (it’s dystopian but not so outlandish that it is impossible, which makes it all the more effective). I flew Threw the book because of the way the chapters were set out (short and snappy so I found I was picking it up even when I had just a spare few minutes), so in that sense it was a jog to read.

However, it had no climax and so felt like the whole thing was a grand set up for something that never quite happened (was the climax meant to be (Francesca’s death? If so it was predictable. Or grandy’s? Again, I’d have wanted it to tug on my heart strings a little more).

I did enjoy the book but it felt like a brilliant start that burnt out about half way through. Saying that, I would recommend to fans of Atwood, and could see it being serialised for TV.

This book is quite chilling in that the news headlines in the story are very similar to ones we are currently reading in the press. It is well written and thought provoking, although the inevitable end it is predicting is sad beyond measure as it suggests the futility of everything.

The High House is another climate change fictionalisation - better than most, but still with its flaws.

Better because the writing is gorgeous. Sparsely written bite-sized sections, the prose exudes urgency and desperation. That stylisation worked well, the characters racing towards the impending doom, but it worked only up to a point. With writing that sparse, it's good for the drama, but it limits character development, and becomes a song with a single beat. This would have been more powerful if the rhythm occasionally changed, allowing the emotions to rise and fall.

The main flaws for me were with the plot

The book is based in an unnamed, northern hemisphere coastal village. In Cormac McCarthy's The Road, based in America, the survivors deal with armed cannibals. In Maja Lunde's The End of the Ocean, based in Europe, fights were common with fists and sticks. In The High House, they saw refugees in the distance, but no-one seemed to be pillaging, and no defences were considered. For the end of the world, it seemed very safe.

Likewise, in one season, the store stopped delivering their groceries, but the local vicar was still able to drive to their house. It seemed society was breaking down, but with pockets of normalcy.

Still, minor complaints for an otherwise very enjoyable read.

‘Neutrality has become a fantasy. The time for it is past’

A novel that fully captures the mood of our times like no other and what one can imagine as the moment of ecological and societal collapse -- chilling in its exactitude: seeing an increasing number of ecological disasters, the sensation that collapse is far, the difficulty in apprehending the magnitude of the problem, the tragic moment of acceleration and collapse when unprecedented events take place and too much is at stake at the same time.

Our protagonists are alive because Francesca, the mother of one of them and a climate activist, has fitted a house that could guarantee survival in dire times. Their reminiscences of the warmth and little comforts of things past are beautiful, vivid and evocative, infused with the luminous longing and nostalgia that is only experienced when something is lost forever. Other interesting elements are the value survival and the backstory, the way the tension among the characters changes due to the circumstances. The acuteness and intensity of the writing is a strength of this novel, which at times tends to slow down in the renditions of different reactions to the same event.

Highly recommended and in the same lines is The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh, about our mind’s struggle to conceive cataclysmic events of such scope and what it can be like to be in unchartered territory. It seems his thought illuminates these pages.

Beautiful, urgent and timely slowburner

My thanks to Swift Press for an arc of this novel via Netgalley.