Hello!
This week I have chosen All Quiet at the End of the World by Lauren James, from the YA Book Prize Shortlist 2020. This is a dystopian fiction set in the future that explores not only the existential crisis of humanity, but the very nature of what it means to be human.
Inspired by Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, who states that ‘I believe that our species will not last long’. All Quiet at the End of the World runs with Rovelli’s thread that ‘we belong to a short-lived genus of species’ and that ‘the brutal climate and environmental changes which we have triggered are unlikely to spare us’.
These themes could make for heavy reading combined with the premise of a virus that stops fertility in humans. However, the narrative, set in London, is firmly about Lowrie (16 years old) and Shen (17 years old), their relationship with each other, their parents and their responsibility to world as the youngest remaining humans. Born from frozen eggs seventy years after the virus, in the time of sterility, they are waiting for scientists to find a cure. Themes of environmental action, a previously unknown virus, quarantine, waiting for a cure are never more pressing than in the current Covid-19 environment for not only a YA, but for an adult audience.
The narrative takes the form of a dual storyline and opens in the past when the virus first emerged with a call log for Maya Waverley to the emergency services. The narrative skips eighty-five years and is written in the first person from Lowrie’s point of view, as she and Shen explore the London underground with her Dad (a horticulturist). Lowrie finds Maya’s purse in an abandoned tube ‘the purse flops open, revealing rows of plastic cards’ and thus the scene is set for the link between the two narratives.
Lowrie and Shen are teenage explorers, detectives and scientists who try to unravel what has happened over the decades since the virus. Shen (from China, deaf in one ear and afraid of rats) is presented as being ‘the best at intellectual things’ but for Lowrie, ‘fixing stuff is my speciality’. Through their mudlarking they find and document pieces that are buried in the Thames and anywhere they can explore and is shown in a log at the beginning of each chapter. Their parents work together to teach them all they will need to know to survive in this new world.
Their futuristic world is defined with reference to bots who ‘keep things safe’ specifically ‘Mitch’ who befriends Lowrie and Shen and is describes as having ‘spindly metal legs’ that ‘have sprouted out of the robots rusted spherical body’.
Maya’s story is told through Lowrie’s research from what is left of Maya’s social media feeds where Maya revealing her feelings: ‘So much for feeling calmer! Today I can’t stop showering and showering, trying to get the virus off me’ and identifying a post virus world: ‘that was my first day of our new normal’ as well as her fears ‘I’m still having nightmares about the virus’. Maya attaches new items in her feed: ‘NEWSBREAKING.com: Doctors report Drop in Women Conceiving’, providing an external eye on the changing situation due to the virus.
The conflicting feelings of being a teenager are explored as Lowrie questions her sexuality, ‘I might be maybe probably definitely bisexual’ as well as and her attraction to Shen, ‘I find myself eyeing his forearms again’. The need to get away from her parents and experience independence also raises conflicting feelings, ‘now that we’re finally independent, I just miss him terribly’.
All Quiet at the End of the World questions evolution and what it means to be human. The extinction of humanity, climate change, the restoration of eco systems, prejudice and the ethics of assisted suicide are all seen through the love story of Lowrie and Shen. It is told in simple language, ‘I fill my utility belt with the essentials – a penknife, screwdriver, chisel and spanner’ that affirm Lowrie’s voice and power.
Themes: love, death, climate change, pandemic, nature of humans, existence, existential crisis, independence, parent-child relationships, bullying, prejudice, sacrifice.
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The Gold Shoe Writer 