What in the good god did I just read—and did I love it? Why yes... yes, I think I kind of fell in love. Once I got used to the writing, that is. And guuurrrl, Gransden really makes us work for it, doesn’t she?
Set in England and impressively narrated in single-syllable words the entire way through, this story follows Flo, a girl on a mission to find her brother after nearly everyone else has fled in an attempt to outrun an unexplained, encroaching mass of red. Along the way, she encounters a parade of strange, sickly, and eccentrically broken people who, while not exactly helpful, point her toward where they think her brother might have gone.
It’s a stark and charred world Flo walks through... barren, brutal, and full of apocalyptic horrors she cannot unsee and yet refuses to flinch from.
Gransden doesn’t hand you a map. She leaves you to figure it out on your own. And somehow, you do. This is a slow, surreal burn of a novella where mother-tongue minimalism meets end-times dread. And when it hits, it hits like a fever you don’t want to break.
Fans of The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman and The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell—where language bends, breaks, and rebuilds itself around fierce female protagonists—will absolutely devour this. If you love stories where women face impossible odds and the prose dares you to keep up, this one’s for you.