The End and Everything Before It By Finegan Kruckemeyer
But I ve failed It s far too loose and whimsical for my reading tastes I can t make head nor tail of any of it and there s too many books out there waving at me to persevere with something that I have to read other people s reviews of to understand. Thanks to text_publishing for the book review copy Sorry I couldn t give it a better rap 272 This gem of literary fiction fed my mind and nourished my heart It s a story about the power of the stories we tell and don t tell ourselves and each other It s a love story between the infinity of the water and the solidity of the land It s a story of self and community.
Purpose and community It s an uplifting allegory rich in meaning that makes you appreciate the importance of love and remember the passage of time we re here for such a small time and we all need to make it count And the ending gasp was just sublime. The End and Everything Before It by Finegan Kruckemeyer was unforgettable and a definite contender for my Top 5 Books of 2024 this year Highly recommended Copy courtesy of Text Publishing 272 A beautiful read It s hard to describe this because really it s not till the end that it s all explained It drifts through times and characters who are all connected by a place There s a building on a hill overlooking a forest next to the sea The building goes through stages.
A debut novel from one of Australia s most internationally celebrated playwrights The End and Everything Before It is a kaleidoscopic story about the way love and loss shape a community Emma watched her mother s kayak disappear among icebergs in the Arctic Sea Six years later her brother who had not spoken since their mother was lost warns Emma of the curse of death that she brought to anyone who looked on her face before tragedy befalls him too Emma consigns herself to a solitary life at sea where she can do no harm After years alone she is mysteriously drawn to land And she docks at an island afraid of what her arrival might mean for the welcoming man and his daughter waving from the jetty But who knows where our stories begin and end or how they are entwined Who knows whether now on the island she begins a new tale or takes a role in a story that began generations ago with a feast in the forest or a chest of gold coins plunged into the sea or an orphan in a bookshop beguiled by an elusive and troubled woman Finegan Kruckemeyer s astonishing debut The End and Everything Before It is a sweeping joyous novel about love loss and the power of stories an uplifting journey into our deepest humanity The End and Everything Before ItThis book was wonderful magical reading through until part two of self through community and community through self It s a story of what s good bad and in between It s universal it s timeless it s their story yet it s my story your story our story And you should absolutely read it. And you we don t know where you come from either I mean you told us But that s just the story telling the story It s not like we don t believe you It s just you can t really say what a story means until it s over And you re not over 272 What a beautiful novel one I am so glad to have read The writing is calming and thoughtful and the story itself will no doubt make readers think about their own stories their ancestry and their connections to place. It s not necessarily an easy book to read the structure and small details can be tough to follow at times But it s thoroughly recommended 272 The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing publisher of The End and Everything Before It This magical book honours the miracle of how people make people who become precious just to their chosen kin just for a little while before life continues on and sweeps us all along in its wake It s filled with a gentle acknowledgement of how we each suffer alone but is also suffused with hope at how even the worst kinds of grief can be survived through loving connections with others Bursting with wisdom and poetry this novel reminds us that storytelling is a moral force and a salve to every lost soul Ceridwen Dovey Tender lyrical funny devastating The End and Everything Before It is a map of the miracles great and small that make up our lives Liam Pieper Moving profound and deeply layered A triumphant melding of time and place grief and love and above all the strength of the human spirit to counter tragedy with hope and endure Books Publishing Mysterious poetic earthy and profound The End and Everything Before It is a true delight unlike anything I ve ever read Ayelet Waldman This is a novel unlike any other It s unputdownable and in a world of angst ridden fiction it s uplifting Kruckemeyer s female characters defy stereotypes Quietly devastating ANZ LitLovers A startlingly optimistic work a fable about making families and communities about the practices that bring people together as the world wrenches them apart Catriona Menzies Pike Guardian Beautifully demonstrates how stories can connect and shape lives transcending generations and geographical boundaries Masterful storytelling and rich character development create an immersive reading experience that lingers in the mind even after the story concludes Readers will be captivated by the deep exploration of human experiences and the significant role that memory and narrative play in shaping our perception of ourselves and those around us Readings A profoundly tragicomic philosophy of lifeStories of death love and grief collide in this book Age A book that is as much a puzzle as it is a novel Explores the deeper question of where do stories start and where do stories end What is a story and when can we start to look at it as an entity Puts tiles into a mosaic that creates a picture A beautiful concept a beautiful preoccupation ABC Radio Melbourne Evenings David Astle A lyrical story about the inevitability of events of chance moments of threads slowly woven together The reward is a love story and a bit of magic Kruckemeyer will crush your cynicism with a velvet glove The novel s climax might break your heart but you will be thankful for the reminder of the importance of life s everyday miracles A celebration of the natural world a wonderful argument against capitalism and a welcome antidote to dark times Saturday Paper A beguiling debut A parable of survival that attests to the value of resilient social bonds We need writers who can anatomise the forces that are tearing our world apart and we have them in abundance Kruckemeyer has taken on a different task envisioning what is required of us to build a world in which we can thrive Catriona Menzies Pike Guardian 4. 5 stars Whimsical lyrical at the same time complex in its structure Air of sophisticated fairytale constructed by a master storyteller At no time do you feel that these parables are trite or manufactured It s impossible to believe that this is Kruckemeyer s debut novel All you want from a novel RNZ Nine to Noon Childhood the stories that families tell each other the sea We re in the business of the stories that villages tell themselves The End and Everything Before It erupts into an epic story of a colonised land a story of landscape and multiple generations A rewarding read ABC RN The Bookshelf Full of magic and wisdom beautifully told and spread through time like connective tissue Herald Sun This is without question the best book I have read this year It was simply a joy to read Full of wisdom poetry humour sadness and magic The End and Everything Before It is a real pleasure I ll be very surprised and disappointed if it doesn t get nominated for the Miles Franklin and other awards By crikey I d like to see some of his plays but I also hope Kruckemeyer keeps on writing novels Through the Biblioscope Wit wisdom and whimsy Utterly original yet rich with an atmosphere of fairytale and fable The language and rhythm is gorgeous in its unadorned lyricism. This book is a balm InReview 5 stars SublimeI found myself wanting to read it again before I d even finished An uplifting allegory rich in meaning Unforgettable Carpe Librum A debut novel from one of Australia s most accomplished playwrights The End and Everything Before It is a kaleidoscopic story about the way love and loss shape a community Avenue Bookstore A swirling interconnected tale about a place and its communityLyrical heartfelt beguiling and than a little bit magical Pile By the Bed An absolute joy of a novel The kind of story woven around a campfire A dreamy blend of magic realism the story of generations and whimsical gentle humour New Voices Down Under An extraordinary debut Kruckemeyer s prose is nothing short of sublime Uplifting and life affirming A book that invites and even demands re reading with each pass revealing new connections and depths A truly unforgettable literary journey NZ Booklovers An unforgettable debut Australian Arts Review Part fable part parable part parabolic Magical 3CR Published or Not Kruckemeyer s writing is poetic filled with lines that shimmer with wit and wry observation He explores the quiet strength of human connections the complicated nature of grief the legacies we leave behind and the power of community to shape us across generations Feels like a gentle reminder of what truly matters our connections our communities and the legacies we create not just for ourselves but for those who come after us This is a book that left me feeling unexpectedly hopeful about the world we live in Novel Feelings I immersed myself in it over one weekend and upon finishing knew it was a rare reading experience that would live with me for years to come The Best Little Bookshop in Town 5 stars What a debut I am completely in love with this book and want to push it into the hands of everyone I know Quirky original so original and full of heart and love and wisdomI cried and smiled reread passages and remembered why I love books so much What a joy Good Reading 272 Every now and then a book comes along that reminds me of the sheer joy of reading and this debut novel by playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer is such a book It s very nearly perfect and is bound to stay with me for a long time Defying all the conventions of traditional storytelling readers who enjoy literary fiction will love this and readers who don t well they just might be converted. This story reads like a fairy tale or fable with larger than life characters populating a detailed imaginary landscape The structure is almost kaleidoscopic beginning somewhere in the second half then moving backwards forwards and all over really It slowly becomes apparent that there are connections to be made everywhere and just when you think you have it all straight the end comes along to let you know that there s to it than you could ever have imagined Such an apt title. While this is a relatively short book people who follow my reviews will know I m a slow reader so it took me a few sittings to read through to the end I really wish I d been able to finish in a single day because then I may not have given into my own curiosity frustration and drawn a mud map of how I thought all the characters related to each other I warn against this because it kind of spoiled the experience for me even though Kruckemeyer had surprises in store Instead I would urge readers to just trust the author. With no real anchors to time or place I must say this book gave me strong vibes of Robbie Arnott s superb novel The Rain Heron It s just about the highest praise I can give Highly recommended 272 Reading the sample chapter of The End and Everything Before It by Finegan Kruckemeyer gave me goosebumps and reminded me of the fable at the beginning of The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott The fact that Australian literary author Robbie Arnott also the author of Limberlost was involved in the launch of this book speaks volumes about the confidence Text Publishing and this wildly successful author have in Kruckemeyer s debut. I usually need a clear structure and detest a dreamy narrative but somehow in The End and Everything Before It Kruckemeyer has produced a loosely structured dreamlike group of stories connected by geographical proximity through time and I loved it An intergenerational saga that is far from linear each generation offers a parable within their tale yet this happens without clear dates to place characters in chronological order The reader is left to realise in their own time oh that must have happened when the building on the hill was a hospital or I think this character is the granddaughter of that one. These kinds of literary feats are usually beyond my intellectual ability or exceed my willingness to surrender to the narrative but here the author surprised me with this highly original and accessible offering Additionally I never re read books because I always worry that I could be wasting an opportunity to discover a new favourite but I found myself wanting to read The End and Everything Before It again before I d even finished. Enough gushing let me share some quotes with you because the writing was sublime When describing a feast the host remarks that it s a great success not because he s the best host but because of the parts that make the whole. The tables are busy thoroughfares along which the things of life pass back and forth salad bowls misplaced forks conversation bottles of ale And laughter Laughter ringing off glasses clattering onto plates making eyes shine cheeks crease I sit in the laughter happy to have set the table that holds it Page 16Doesn t that just make you warm and fuzzy inside It makes me wish I could attend this feast while simultaneously thinking of Christmas. If they d had a question she d given detail If they were silent she d pushed on And it felt like a shedding like standing on a porch when you ve run through the rain and stepping out of boots and stripping off each layer and shaking loose your hair and wiping down your face with a sure strong hand before you open the door and step into a warm room It has seemed that she couldn t enter into that warm room comfort until every tale was told until every memory still dripping was hung upon its hook Page 62 63Moments like this made me pause and reflect on the perfect imagery and the character descriptions while sometimes brief managed to convey both depth and meaning. By contrast one moment had me snorting at the sheer unexpected nature of the character in question A lady s maid is speaking to her widowed mistress on the one year anniversary of her husband s death Like how we got in that yellow wallpaper the day of the seeing how yellow s your colour and how it wasn t so much his colour but now that s not so much of an issue And we thought if the wallpaper went up all right then maybe maybe we could give everything a a good old spring clean And some of his things His hat there by the door his overcoat the pipe there where it lies on that round low table in the library Well maybe those things could I hit Betty so hard in the face her glasses bounced off the nearby wall Page 72Poor Betty she didn t make a sound Despite her cruelty the wealthy widow was a favourite character and provided the dark side to some of the wholesome characters in the novel Birds and nests are an important thematic reference in the novel and a lonely stone building on top of the hill is another marker of time as the reader notes the changes in purpose from prison to hospital to immigration facility and juvenile home. Booklovers will treasure the history of the town s bookshop and story connections And on the bus back to the home I read the book And that night I finished the book and put it on my shelf Then I slept the sleep of someone who s just finished a story one where half your dreams are there already Page 142 143That s exactly how I felt about this book Born in Ireland and now living in Adelaide it s a little easier to believe this is Kruckemeyer s debut novel when you discover he s an award winning playwright The End and Everything Before It is a literary fable about love loss legacy first it s a prison then a hospital next a juvenile detention centre One prisoner is bequeathed the land beneath the hill and he establishes a village to service the surrounding farms and the town grows and many of the generations of characters are introduced It s so well done and very difficult to stop reading as I loved the characters as they go through their lives filled with good times and bad 272 In sympathy with the title of this book let me begin at the end this is without question the best book I have read this year and perhaps for the last few years It was simply a joy to read. Finnegan Kruckemeyer was born in Ireland but migrated to Australia when he was eight and now lives in Adelaide He is an internationally award winning playwright with than one hundred plays performed around the world many of them written for young audiences The End and Everything Before It is his first novel published by Text Publishing here in Melbourne. What is it about Well that s easy enough It s about death The End and life Everything Before It about grief and loss cruelty and love About what it means to live a good life About redemption More than anything you ll find out at the very end it s about the miraculous strength of a mother s love for a child. There s a mythic feel to the novel particularly at the start a heightened sense of unreality a sense that you are being recounted a legend a story for the ages In many ways it reminds me in a very positive way of the writing of fellow Australian Robbie Arnott particularly the latter s novels Flames and The Rain Heron. The End and Everything Before It is not however an easy book to describe in any detail without giving too much away particularly the very clever underlying concept So let me just set the scene a little. We re introduced in the first chapter to a teenage girl Emma the Greek though as she tells us she is not Greek As the book opens she is at sea adrift in a lifeboat with her father and three brothers They have apparently escaped from their sinking trawler the temperature is icy and their survival is in doubt. In the next chapter we meet a man called Isaac who has been in prison for some years after being convicted of murder He has just been unexpectedly set free and told that he has inherited many acres of land on the other side of a forest from the bare hill on which the prison stands The inheritance is from a great uncle who Isaac barely knew On this land on this unexpected gift Isaac builds a town with the assistance of the neighbouring farmers Almost the entirety of the story is set in this small town which is on the shore of an ocean Unsurprisingly this town is where Emma the Greek eventually arrives after a long and hazardous journey. Throughout the book we are introduced to a variety of characters as the years and generations pass At one point we may see these people from an initial third person point of view and then have a first person point of view of the same person The scenes of the story are not all given to us in a chronological order we range back and forth in time as their stories are told All this makes up a fascinating kaleidoscope of a place and community Their stories are mostly happy ones filled with love and joy though as the years pass there is naturally loss and grief Accepting and understanding grief is indeed an important theme of the book accepting death as a welcome release after a well lived life a redemptive life. I liked this so much that no sooner had I finished reading it than I turned around and immediately started again something I do quite rarely and the book well repays that close attention though of course you don t need to do that to enjoy it thoroughly on the first read Personally I am glad that I read the book twice because on the second reading I could understand better the bones of the book how intricately and cleverly constructed it is how the pieces work how all the characters are related how the little mysteries add up and foreshadow the revelation at the end of the book which ties it all together. Full of wisdom poetry humour sadness and magic The End and Everything Before It is a real pleasure to read Highly recommended I ll be very surprised and disappointed if it doesn t get nominated for the Miles Franklin and other awards. See here for my regular book review newsletter 272 What a pleasure it was to read this deceptively whimsical first novel from the celebrated playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer This is a novel unlike any other It s like a fairy tale told over the course of two centuries and like those of Grimm and Perrault it features some rough justice for evildoers There s also a wicked stepmother who unwittingly provides redemption to an orphan a stash of tainted treasure the transformation of a beast through the power of love and wonderful characters who defy their destiny And fittingly for a book about the power of stories and storytelling there s a bookshop too It sounds daft but remarkably it works It s unputdownable and in a world of angst ridden fiction it s uplifting Although it s completely different not least because it is utterly original in every way it cheered me in the way that Rod Usher s Poor Man s Wealth offset the bleakness of a book I d just read Like a well constructed play the novel is episodic with each vivid scene linking the acts together Chapter 1 ends with the image of Emma alone on her boat sailing into undeserved guilt and loneliness Chapter 2 introduces the first of the orphans Isaac who has fallen on hard times indeed When I inherited the land I had little. It was a large acreage and the great uncle Henry who d died was an unknown figure in my life a man who went to war and remained there laid out on some stretch of cold ground after the others returned home Over the next years a slow succession of deaths occurred the wife of that great uncle some cousins and eventually my parents too in the depths of a season when rains are heavy and wagons are given to taking corners badly and sliding off country roads into rickety barns which then collapse and flatten all beneath them. Isaac is in prison in a penitentiary perched on a high hill denuded of any trees that might hide an escaping prisoner He has been there for fourteen years tending a small garden reading what few books were imprisoned with us and fending off the attacks of the volatile prisoners What might such a man do when he inherits a parcel of land To read the rest of my review please visit 272
| The End and Everything Before It By Finegan Kruckemeyer |
| 1922790737 |
| 9781922790736 |
| English |
| 272 |
| Paperback |
.:Moving and surprising with a twist at the end that had my eyes leaking a little: When Emma the Greek meets Conor the orphan and his daughter she tells them about her adventures at sea, By crikey I d like to see some of his plays but I also hope Kruckemeyer keeps on writing novels Many thanks to Text Publishing for the review copy. Little to eat little to live on and little company little to justify my existence I could be here or I could not and little would it matter Then I inherited the land. At the same time as branches of my family were being pruned by time and fate I experienced a contraction of my own of livelihood and love and liberty p.10 11