The Casualties

by Nick Holdstock

In the vein of The Leftovers, a man recounts the final weeks of his neighborhood before the apocalyptic event which only a few of the eccentric residents will survive.

Samuel Clark likes secrets. He wants to know the hidden stories of the bizarre characters on the little streets of Edinburgh, Scotland. He wants to know about a nymphomaniac, a man who lives under a bridge, a girl with a cracked face. He wants to uncover their histories because he has secrets of his own. He believes, as people do, that he is able to change. He believes, as the whole world does, that there is plenty of time to solve his problems. But Samuel Clark and the rest of the world are wrong. Change and tragedy are going to scream into his and everyone’s lives. It will be a great transformation, a radical change; and it just might be worth the cost.

Written by a rising literary star whose work has been published in notoriously selective publications such as n+1 and The Southern Review, The Casualties is an ambitious debut novel that explores how we see ourselves, our past and our possible futures. It asks the biggest question: How can we be saved?

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Post Apocalyptic, Scotland, Novels, Contemporary, Dystopia

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 4, 2015

Reviews

[Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

www.melissa413readsalot.blogspot.com

I started out really loving this book, but somewhere along the way I started getting confused with the way the author was writing back and forth with people.

Overall I enjoyed reading about the different characters in the story. There is Sam Clark that owns a bookstore. Alasdair is a homeless man that sleeps under the bridge and yells out cures and random strange things to people. You find out later who he really is. Caitlin works at the charity clothes store next door to Sam's bookstore. She also has issues with her face cracking. She goes to the dermatologist once in the book, but nothing is ever rectified. Toby is a grossly obese boy who's mom has to put locks on all of the cabinets and refrigerator so he won't gorge himself. He seems to have some mental issues and doesn't understand much, just eating. His mom can't take him out for fear he will attack someone with food on them. Mrs. Maclean is a teacher and she just wants to die. Rita and Sean are drunks that hang out on the beach and on their favorite bench. Sinead is a nympho that ends up being Toby's caregiver and for some reason she doesn't get sexually crazy around him, thank God! Trudy is a prostitute that Sam visits from time to time. There is a man that owns the store but his name has gotten away from me, he visits Trudy too, but he's not good to her.

All of these people have strange little stories to tell in the book. There are random people mentioned in the book that are very curious as well.

This book is like a pre-apocalypse book. This story is set in 2016 and supposedly a billion people die in 2017. You have to keep on your toes in the book or you will get lost.

This all happens in a little town in Scotland called Comely Bank.

I love how the author added pictures of people in the book. These pictures come from an old family album Alasdair finds in the garbage. They are old time pictures and I think they are great.

I liked this book well enough because I love to read books about people and their lives, even if it is just fiction. I didn't like getting confused from time to time. Don't let my review take away from your wanting to read it yourself because my confusion may not be yours :)

**I would like to thank NETGALLEY and ST. MARTIN'S PRESS for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book for my honest review.**

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

superb stuff - grabs attention from page 1 and never lets go

adding a little more - I saw this book on Net galley just before going on a 10 day trip and thought that it sounded interesting, but I never expected that it would so grab and absorb me that I would have to finish it before I leave; the blurb is fairly accurate though one thing to be noted is that the novel's structure will be understood only at the end - there are hints of course - and it is one to be really savored with some of the most memorable characters in the novels read by me in recent times

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars

Just plain enjoyable. The Casualties is a pre-pocalyptic novel that through its' structure tells the story of a small town and it's quirky people. The event that kills more than 2 billion of the planet is not a secret and is spoken of quite a bit by our narrator. I loved this character study that reminded me so much of a Stephen King novel. There are many great people that are unique and their stories were a blast to read. This felt like a truly original piece that sits in a genre that is so over done!!!!

Fun summer read that I highly recommend.

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark, haunting and full of great characters, The Casualties tells the story of the people living on a little street in Edinburgh, in the final weeks before an apocalyptic event which only a few of them will survive.

[Connie Rea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have so many great books on my TBR list that it's not often I read books I don't like. However, that doesn't mean I limit myself to well know authors or sure fire proven winners. Some of my best reads were books that no one I knew had read. Glancing at the blup of this book I thought it had real potential.

What can I say....this will probably be my lowest rated book this year. Damn it! I hate it when that happens...when you read a book and you just know it will be the low point of the year. I've spent some time trying to figure out why I disliked it so much. Really, dislike is a strong word. I didn't dislike it so much as I just didn't care for it. It was a very flat read for me. It didn't excite me. It didn't leave me wanting to rush through it to find out how it ends. It didn't have me wanting to slow down and savory every word. Once I bonded with a character they would do something really strange that weirded me out and I couldn't get past it enough to like them or be interested in them. Then there are the characters I just didn't get enough insight to even feign interest in them.

After reading the book and being somewhat disappointed I rushed to read the other reviews to see why they loved it so much. Hmmmmmmm....nothing to enlighten me there either...Granted, there aren't many out there as the book has yet to be published at this time....but what I saw gave me no insight as to why they rated the book so high....

Alas....I guess that's just how it is sometimes....as really, I can't give much insight to why I didn't enjoy it as much....nothing in it made me passionate to hate it either (I sometimes love books that I hate! Just to know they can get such raw emotions from me is something!)....there just wasn't much inspiration in this novel for me....it was like mushy potatoes....yes, you can eat them....but you neither love them or hate them...they are just something to fill you up until the next great meal comes along....

ARC provided by Netgalley for an honest review

[Gerhard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to follow ... Phew, Sam Clark is one of the most unlikeable characters I have encountered recently, in a difficult and obtuse book that challenges the reader's innate empathy.

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Casualties by Nick Holdstock is a unique, very highly recommended novel about change.

A major disaster is heading toward the Comely Bank neighborhood of Edinburgh, Scotland. It is referenced obliquely, as if it is common knowledge, because our narrator in The Casualties is telling us about the disaster from the vantage point of sixty years in the future. What he wants to talk about are some of the inhabitants of the neighborhood and tells us their stories. He is looking back and talking about the past, in 2016 and 2017, right before the apocalypse happens and everything changes.

The narrator tells us right away that Samuel Clark, who lives in Comely Bank and runs a charity used book store, is a murderer. Sam likes to collect bits of lives that have been left in the books donated to his shop, things like old letters, photos, airline ticket stubs. He also likes to hear the stories of the people around him. Holdstock introduces us, through Sam, to the denizens Sam is curious about, and those who are obsessed with him. The exceptional people we meet are: Alasdair, the might-be-crazy man who lives under the bridge; Caitlyn, who works in the charity clothes shop next to the bookstore and has a face that develops cracks; Mr. Asham runs a store and longs to belong to the community; Mrs. Maclean taught for over forth years and longs to die; Rita and Sean are two drunks who always hang out together at the park; Toby is an extremely obese young man who craves food constantly so he must be supervised all the time; Sinead is a nymphomaniac who watches Toby but longs for Sam; Trudy is a Filipino prostitute.

It is a narrative with finely drawn characters that are well developed, remarkable, and interesting.

Holdstock presents his story from a unique viewpoint, which sets this pre-apocalypse story apart in a category all on its own. Even while introducing us to these characters and leading us up to the murder Sam is supposed to commit, Holdstock also drops small, vague references to the disaster that will be happening, a disaster that makes all the drama he is telling us about seem inconsequential. But that is the beauty of this novel. The narrator has a point of view from far in the future, a time years after the impending disaster and all the subsequent societal developments about which he hints. He's talking about the past many years ago. The happenings in the Edinburgh neighborhood are trivial in comparison to the bigger picture. We really don't know what the disaster is until we are far along in the story and even then he does not talk about that. He talks about this neighborhood just before the disaster.

And this choice is brilliant.

Holdstock creates a tension right away because we know something much bigger is coming but his narrator chooses to focus in on Sam and this odd, damaged group of people in this particular little neighborhood. He wants to tell us a story. It is akin to hearing about now what people were doing before boarding the Titanic, or just before the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, or the devastating Tsunami of 2004. A disaster much bigger than any little drama is coming, but the narrator needs to tell us this story, the story about what was happening just before the disaster to these people.

The ending might not suit everyone, but I could appreciate it in the context of the whole novel. This one was a nice surprise.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Thomas Dunne for review purposes.

[Paula · Rating 1 out of 5]

A senseless mess. Aims high and ends up pathetic.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the idea of looking back and writing about a pre-apocalypse time about characters on a small street. The beginning started off great with his summary of various people on the street. At some point, I just really stopped caring about most of the people and the last part of the book was confusing with the constant changing POV. The narrator would be writing about Sam but would say I, A LOT. So was he writing about Sam or himself? The book really had potential so I was kind of bummed that it drifted off the way it did.

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Casualties is the rare post-apocalyptic novel where life is better after then end. The end being August 2, 2017, the day a shower of meteors struck "North America, Europe, and Australia, and nowhere else (excepting the small fragment that struck poor Socotra, 'The Island of Bliss,' whose people had never attacked or enslaved anyone, and which had such beautiful trees as anything...)."

The world benefited from the unexpected tabula rasa, and this is why the real story is what happened before on Comely Bank in Edinburgh, Scotland, back when Samuel Clark, murderer, believed if you studied something enough, learned its history enough, attempted to fix it enough, it would get better. It doesn't. Sometimes you need a fresh start.

What made Comely Bank exceptional was the small pocket of eccentric residents. Samuel was one of them.

Whilst most of its people were wholly of their time—in that they did not believe in God, had small families, took holidays to faraway places, enjoyed electrical consumer goods, believed in things like equality, democracy, and the worth of the individual—there were a few who stood out. This was partly due to the way they looked) their size, their face, the way they walked), but mostly because their ideas went against the grain. They worshipped God, wished for death, or were chaste. They refused to own property.

The nymphomaniac, the man who lived under a bridge, the girl with a cracked face, and many others were worth remembering. People you remember after the world ends deserve to be called exceptional.



The novel is in two parts. In the first part, we meet Samuel and the  exceptional people of Comely Bank. Samuel runs a used bookstore/charity shop. He thumbs through the pages of discarded books, looking for history and meaning. Slowly, over years, he finds snippets of history belonging to some of Comely Bank's most eccentric residents. He collects everything he finds in a chest--a pandora's box of history. He uses what he finds to change the future. 



In the second part, we learn the role Samuel plays in his neighbors' death or survival--and it doesn't happen quite like you think it will. 



The Casualties is a book that can't be categorized. The narrative is nonlinear. It's a book about the weeks before the end of the world--a world that is better for having lost nearly everything and everyone. The book's uniqueness is what made it so enjoyable.  My only problem with the book was the ending, oddly enough. The writing throughout was tight and precise, but the last chapter became increasingly stream-of-conscious as the past and the present narratives collided. The intent, I imagine, was to finish the book on a  crescendo  as all the pieces rapidly slid into place. Instead, I was left feeling like one of the casualties, knocked about from page to page and waiting for the end to come.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but unremittingly bleak. Did not improve my January mood.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beginning, middle, end—but not necessarily of the same novel

For some reason, I missed the three-page Prologue to Nick Holdstock's novel, starting immediately with Chapter One: "Sam (short for "Samuel") Clark, born 1988, was the only child of William and Rebecca Clark. Like most murderers, he was unexceptional." Great beginning! Sam runs a charity bookstore in Comely Bank, near the Stockbridge district of Edinburgh, an area I happen to know. Sam collects people, mostly from the little fragments of their lives they leave in their donated books—receipts, letters, photographs—but also through his keen observation of his more characterful neighbors. And so we meet them: an amnesiac who sleeps under bridges and harangues passers-by with unsought advice about their health; a woman who covers her face to hide a self-exacerbated skin ailment; the Pakistani owner of a general store with a secret sex life; a nymphomaniac girl in charge of a mentally deficient young man with an eating compulsion. In these early pages, Holdstock shows much of the charm of an Alexander McCall Smith novel, though with Smith's lovable curiosities moved out to the edgier fringes of society.

But other things begin to happen too. I gradually came to realize what I would have learned up front if I had noticed the Prologue (though it was far more interesting this way), that this was a portrait of a community in the months before some catastrophe would end life there and in a large part of the northern hemisphere. The story is being told, furthermore, by a first-person narrator whose identity, time, and place we only gradually discover. Meanwhile, the oddball inhabitants of Comely Bank, who had been presented at first in a series of charming vignettes or short-stories, begin to interact in ways that are generally not charming at all. The middle section of this novel soon begins to feel as though it was being lived in a madhouse, and my initial five-star evaluation went down to three.

Then at the end, Holdstock switches genre again, to something more like China Miéville. In a simultaneous picture, told in alternating paragraphs, he shows Sam in the last minutes before the catastrophe, and the still-unnamed narrator forty years on, both entering into some kind of terrifying but transformative experience. I found it fascinating, but weirdly disturbing, a far remove from the comfortable character sketches of the opening. It is that opening mood that is promised by the book jacket, an old-world photo of Edinburgh, like a faded watercolor. But hold your horses: the book may begin that way, but it will go through many changes before it is done.

[Luke Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of hearing a reading from this novel years ago, at a PEN Event in New York. Since then. Nick Holdstock found a publisher for this manuscript, and I was able to get an advanced copy.

The selection I'd initially heard was sexy, mean, and hinted at apocalyptic events that the author didn't, that night, go into. So I was dying to read the book and find out the larger context of the first scene I'd experienced. I'm happy to say Holdstock delivered.

The novel takes place in Comely Bank, a neighborhood in Edinburgh. Some pretty fucked up things go down in the pasts and presents of the residents of Comely Bank, and Holdstock's talent is in the way he chooses to make some of these feel like manifestations of everyday anxiety, and some feel like they've kicked a hole in the canvas of neighborly society.

The most unique part of this book is the REALLY fucked up, apocalyptic thing that happens in the future of all of these people's lives. Holdstock uses that as a means to transform the narrative into a retrospective on traumas large, small, and incomprehensible.

This book is thrilling in many a sordid, captivating way. But its greatest moments are insights into the degree to which lives change over spaces of time, and due to traumas small and large.

[Dystopian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well written. I would have given it 4 stars but, as an intelligent fat person, I could not get past the Toby character. Of course a fat person must be either mentally challenged or "stupid." And the whole bit where his body suddenly decides to "balance" itself, and his prior unending appetite disappears -- that's a crock. Don't even get me started on Sinead the nympho using him as a sex deterrent. Nymphomania doesn't present like that as much as fatness does as the author presented it.

Ugh, the more I talk about these things the more I want to take my rating down to 2 stars.

[Horia Ursu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings about this one. Some great writing here and there, excellent characterisation, but too often it has the tendency to stray off in directions that lead nowhere. A name to remember, still.

[Brett Milam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real existential crisis is that we are constantly churning out relics of ourselves — every second of every day, we are dying, die, are reborn, are alive — and in so doing, we live with the baggage of being “casualties” to the events big and small in our lives, too preoccupied to notice much larger, random existential crises, like meteors raining hellfire down upon Earth instantly killing a billion people, largely the inhabitants of North America, Europe and Australia.

That’s the philosophical gist of Nick Holdstock’s 2015 anti-apocalyptic apocalyptic novel, The Casualties. The rub of it all, to quote the quote that Holdstock uses in the middle of the book from Marcel Proust’s, The Fugitive, “The death of oneself is neither impossible nor extraordinary; it is effected without our knowledge, even against our will.”

Indeed, we didn’t ask to be born, and at least in most circumstances, we do not wish to die, or more pointedly, when we die is not when we would “choose,” if we so could. And yet.

The reason Holdstock’s book is a genre-defying anti-apocalyptic apocalyptic novel is that we, as readers, know that in 2017, meteors wiped out a billion people, and the narrator is 60 years into the future, one of the Survivors. That knowledge courses throughout the novel, but it is decidedly not the main focus of the novel. Instead, we spend time with Samuel “Sam” Clark, a bookkeeper, who lives in a small neighborhood in Edinburgh, Scotland, known as Comely Bank.

Sam is a peculiar fellow: He scours old books donated to the bookstore (which are then used to help a charity for preventing cruelty to children) to find the ephemera items left behind, the airline tickets, receipts, birthday cards, postcards, notes, and photos (many of the “found” photos are shown in the book, which was a neat touch). From this, Sam tries to draw conclusions about the “relics” from the past. All the while our narrator 60 years into the future is examining the “relic” that is Sam and the residents of Comely Bank.

Can you really know someone, even from what is left behind in their books or from the books themselves or the conditions of the books? Can even our narrator really know someone like Sam from a snapshot of his life in 2016 leading up to the meteor hit in 2017? After all, as Sam remarks later in the book, “Whatever ‘he’ thought, however ‘he’ felt, was merely one of a succession of selves that did not form a palimpsest, but instead kept peeling away.” The “he” he was in 2016 and 2017 may not even be alive in five years, or a decade, he muses.

Ostensibly, Sam is interested in the secrets of others, and trying to sketch the possible lives those who owned the books, or are in the pictures, lived, but in reality, his parents abandoned him, and he’s hoping to find some sort of “relic” from them to explain why.

But Sam is also interested in the misfits of Comely Bank. Alasdair is the homeless man babbling nonsense under the local bridge, who Sam later learns was a wealthy banker who maybe killed his family in a house fire scheme to get them out of debt. Mrs. Maclean, the headmistress at the school, has a faith crisis, and essentially thinks by doing “good deeds” at her old age, God will finally bestow mercy upon her and take her to heaven to be reunited with her long lost lover. Caitlin has dreadful “cracked” face skin, and because of that, is in a constant state of shame. I can relate to this as someone who also doesn’t have the clearest face skin, either! She also crushes hard on Sam, but Sam is peculiar, as I mentioned, and is almost asexual because of his fear of getting a woman pregnant.

Toby is a gargantuan man-child, who can’t resist the urge to eat and get fatter and fatter. His mother tires of trying to take care of him, so she outsources his care to others. One of those caretakers ends up being Sinead, a nymphomaniac. She uses Toby’s grotesque fatness to essentially ward her off of sex until she also ends up crushing on Sam. (She’s also worried about getting pregnant, having experienced a traumatic abortion.) She’s one of the women able to break Sam of his abstinence. But she more than crushes on Sam; she’s obsessed and wants to drug him into having sex with her.

Trudy is a prostitute who escaped her abusive husband, and in her case, is someone Sam falls in love with and wants to help her escape Comely Bank.

Other, smaller characters are Fahad Asham, who owns a general store and is one of the few Survivors from Comely Bank, despite likely being the one who murdered Trudy, such is the random chance of survival; and Rita and Sean are the entangled drunk lovers with a sordid past who accost anyone who comes near their park bench.

You see, Holdstock is focused on the intimate lives of these people, who are searching for themselves, trying to be reborn again, right before — unbeknownst to them — they are incinerated by a meteor. The “apocalypse” is this interplay, this struggle to live and strive and move through the world. Life is full of min-apocalypses in this way, moments where we feel like our own inner world is ending. I saw someone compare the book’s plot to Titanic and how much of the movie is focused on the lives of those on the ship before disaster strikes. I like that strategy, and that way of bringing the “camera” inward.

Interestingly, though, there is a sense among the Survivors and the inhabitants of countries not hit by the meteors, that the countries that were hit were colonial powers and so, they “deserved it,” even though other colonial powers weren’t hit. Or that, in this new world, 60 years later, things are pretty good! The climate crisis is solved, there are no wars, or much crimes, the streets are cleaner, and so on. In fact, in one passage, Holdstock remarks, “These days we are all so mixed together: The only thing more foolish than speaking of nations is to speak of race.” I do dig that future, but I’d rather not get there at the cost of a billion lives as a trade-off.

And Holdstock reflects upon the people’s attitudes through the narrator by suggesting how grotesque it is to think of the world as “better off” after a billion people instantly died. That idea isn’t new. Watchmen used an existential world crisis to bring humanity together, for example. But I liked its use here precisely because we only get broad brushes at what this new world looks like post-meteor death. That isn’t the focus of the book.

I don’t think this book, judging by its rating on Goodreads at least, is for everyone because of how genre-defining it is, and how oddball it is. But Holdstock’s writing is quirky and witty and interesting and inquisitive and grapples lovingly with these aforementioned existential questions.

To be human is to be a phoenix in a bird cage within a bird cage within a bird cage, dying and rebirthing, and then trying to excavate the bones before dying and rebirthing again before we reach that arbitrary, random demarcation line in the future where we cease to be reborn. And even en masse, as a species, we do that, meteor hellfire or not.

[gwayle · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF 50%

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I've got a weakness, it's post-apocalyptic novels. They are my serious Achilles Heel, and I always get swept into the novels. When I saw the blurb for THE CASUALTIES by Nick Holdstock, I thought it would be another run of the mill (although always enjoyable)apocalypse set novel. I was pleasantly surprised at this slightly different spin on the genre - instead of reading about humans AFTER the fact, spend the last few years in the lives of residents of a small Scottish town.

RELEASE DATE: August 2015

PUBLISHER: Thomas Dunne Books

DISCLAIMER: Novel sent via NetGallery in exchange for a honest review

SYNOPSIS: Samuel Clark likes secrets. He wants to know the hidden stories of the bizarre characters on the little streets of Edinburgh, Scotland. He wants to know about a nymphomaniac, a man who lives under a bridge, a girl with a cracked face. He wants to uncover their histories because he has secrets of his own. He believes, as people do, that he is able to change. He believes, as the whole world does, that there is plenty of time to solve his problems. But Samuel Clark and the rest of the world are wrong. Change and tragedy are going to scream into his and everyone’s lives. It will be a great transformation, a radical change; and it just might be worth the cost.
Written by a rising literary star whose work has been published in notoriously selective publications such as n+1 and The Southern Review, The Casualties is an ambitious debut novel that explores how we see ourselves, our past and our possible futures. It asks the biggest question: How can we be saved?

REVIEW: I don't know if this novel could be classified truly as an apocalyptic novel, as it's ... not. It's about human beings and their lives before the loss of 2 billion people on Earth.

Samuel lives in a quaint Scottish town with a bunch of eccentric people: there's the man who lives under the local town bridge, the two alcoholics who spend their days in the park, the woman with the cracked face, the larger than life man with the mentality of a child, and the Gothic woman who takes care of him ... just to name a few. A year before an apocalyptic event wipes out the major countries of the world (and a few billion people), Samuel provides us with a reflection into the lives of himself and his townsmen and how our past behaviour and actions can change the course of our lives for forever.

It's hard to sum up this novel properly. The novel is not told in a linear narrative, and the perspectives are pretty scattered. We get the point of view of almost nearly everyone in the town (including Samuel), which gives us proper insight into the towns peoples actions and behaviours. The multiple perspectives may sound befuddling, but it actually works in this stories favour: impressions of individuals we get from one point of view tend to change once we get to the point of view of the person in question. Individuals who seem 'unhinged' may be hiding terrible sad secrets. Individuals who play the sympathetic card turn out to be abusers in disguise. It makes for thrilling reads!

What I did like was the 'hinted' to conclusion and the 'hinted' to apocalyptic event that changes the world. Instead of making this center stage and showing how us humans react to said world, we are shown life almost exclusively beforehand. It's only at the end do we get hints at who has survived and who has perished. Sometimes, it's not always who you thought it would be.

[Kelsi H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please check out all of my reviews at http://ultraviolentlit.blogspot.ca!

Right from the start, we know this isn’t just any small Scottish village – something strange has happened in Comely Bank, and it’s not just the population of odd characters. Beginning in the prologue, we are told that this is a novel set in the past – in 2016 – and that things are much different now. It was disconcerting to think of next year as the distant past, with almost Dickensian descriptions filled with wonder at the foibles of our ancient society. There is heavy foreshadowing, but the apocalyptic events that took place will not be clear until the end of the novel, and there will be plenty of unexpected incidents leading up to it.

Meanwhile, this could be described as a pre-apocalyptic novel in which we are given a snapshot of the eccentrics of Comely Bank (a suburb of Edinburgh) as their lives intersect before the end of the world as they know it. The narrator seems to be omniscient, but then occasionally begins to speak in the first person – very disconcerting. At the same time he appears to be archiving the lives of the people around him. His friends and neighbours cover many sins, such as greed, vanity, lust and gluttony. In each chapter, they are seen from a new perspective, giving us a well-rounded view and a reminder that no one is all good or all bad. The narrator spares no one with his exacting descriptions of misdeeds and mistakes.

The writing has a fable-like quality – I wouldn’t have been surprised had the novel started with “once upon a time.” The tone of the narrator is distant and ethereal, as he discusses people in regards to their fairy tale qualities. He hovers over events like a ghost, becoming increasingly present in their lives until he finally merges with the “casualties” of his past. All of the residents of Comely Bank are damaged – whether from their own choices or from actions inflicted upon them.

It is not until almost one third through the novel that we are told what actually caused the apocalypse, and even then, it is a throw-away comment. It is not important how the world changed, but what is important is the realization that the world could not continue as it was (or is). The narrator makes some intriguing diversions into philosophy, citing small human problems that are in fact symptomatic of world problems such as climate change and war. (Loc. 1823-1843) He emphasizes that the end of the world will come due to our “lack of will to change.” Like a fetus spontaneously aborted because it is taking too many resources from its mother, our planet has its ways of removing us also.

This was a great, unexpected novel that can be read on so many different levels. Thought-provoking and enjoyable, however you read it.


I received this book for free from Thomas Dunne Books and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the first third, I was enthralled, but the twist that this is not so much an apocalypse but a cosmic slate wiping turns this into a pile of woowoo nearly as bad--and not half as fun--as H.G. Wells' In the Days of the Comet, where cosmic radiation turns Earth overnight into a socialist free-lovin' paradise. Yeesh, at least that one had free lovin.' The idea that human beings would give up possessions or the desire for beauty or borders is absurd to say the least. Also, what exactly is Holdstock's catastrophe freeing the world from? Nymphomaniacs? Gluttons? Evil people who want to buy things and own their used books? A leftist fantasy that under the surface is really sneakily conservative, especially--as often is the case-- when it comes to women. It's too bad. I went from reading it aloud to rolling my eyes.

Sebald also includes photos in his books, which are wonderful and fill you with awe and make you trail away from the book into your own thoughts. Holdstock attempts to use old photos in the same way, but then chastises the people in them for wanting things--those terrible things!-- before appreciating the little things that apparently these people couldn't appreciate themselves. It's like Granta in the 90s--if Ian Jack had been abducted and brainwashed by Hallmark aliens.

[Delvina Greig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given an ARC in return for an honest review.
First off let me insist that this is NOT a post apocalyptic novel. It's a book about a group of people along a street in Scotland and their actions just before the disaster, thus a general fiction. Only one person is followed after the disaster and that is spotty at best and not the focus of the novel. It doesn't make it a bad book, but it does make for misconceptions for those reading it. Post apocalyptic fans, be forewarned.
Having said that, this is a good book though the analytical tone will put a lot of people off. There will be a group of people who think this is the best thing since sliced bread and others who will hate it unconditionally. I fall into neither camp and enjoyed the tone most times.
The characters are fully fleshed without sentimentality. They are twisted, hurt people who live only as they know how. It is in the interactions between that set the pace and tone for the book.
The one thing I had a little trouble with is keeping up with the multitude of characters as stories were switched back and forth. Also, the switching point of views at the end went on too constantly and too long at the end of the book. A few pages shorter would have tidied that up nicely.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very confusing for me. The author would be writing in first person and the next thing you know, in the same paragraph, he's writing in the third person. Of course, the fact that I kept going in and out of sleep through this did not help this fact either. I know there were a lot of mean characters in this and frankly, I was just bored. I'm seriously glad I'm done with it now.

I hate that I have read two so-so books in a row from the same publisher. However, I would like to thank the publisher and Net Galley for providing me with this free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yes all those great reviews ... I'm tired of dystopian fiction if this is even that. It started off pretty good but too weird and then I just got confused about who was who and who was with who and what had happened do clearly it's not that well-written. I like dark but this wasn't dark in an appealing manned and POV skipped around too much.

I used to finish everything but too many books, not enough time. I don't feel obligated to finish ARCs or review copies either.

[Book Riot Community]

Samuel Clark recounts the last few weeks leading up to a catastrophic event in Edinburgh, Scotland, that very few residents will survive. Several odd characters populate Samuel's stories, but they all have one thing in common: They don't realize how little time they have left. A dark, contemplative first novel.


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[Don · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the good side, interesting, memorable characters. On the bad side, author Holdstock is not a master of writing compelling prose. The story centers around a small Edinburgh neighborhood and it's odd characters, but we also learn meteors are hurdling toward the earth which may destroy all of Europe. The book does build up a head of steam toward the end, but ultimately I cannot recommend it.

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a literary pre-apocalypse novel set shortly before life as we know it ends. In August 2017, a meteor (or meteors) destroy Europe, North America, and Australia (suspiciously targeted meteor(s)!). Our narrator (who speaks in the first person "I") lives sixty years later (in 2077), in a world which seems to have thrived since the impact (this book is not interested in exploring the actual likely fallout from such an event, including a likely impact winter causing massive crop failure and mass extinction. The world ending is more about a personal apocalypse than a global one.

The pre-meteorite life is focused on the odd inhabitants of Edinburgh’s Comely Bank neighborhood. The "main" character of this period is 28-year-old Samuel Clark, a young man working for a charity secondhand bookshop with deep abandonment issues and a hobby of collecting the epherma forgotten in the donated books - airplane tickets, receipts, and photos. Zero points for guessing that Sam is the narrator of the future portion, who has divided his identity between "then" and "now" and believes he is a different person than the pre-disaster version of himself.

Surrounding him is a host of odd characters - an amnesiac houseless man who becomes attached to an old photo album (Alasdair); an insecure woman with "cracks" in her skin (Caitlin); a Pakistani store owner who is first portrayed sympathetically and is later a villain (Mr. Asham); a man with mental disabilities who has an insatiable appetite (Toby); a lonely retired headmistress (Mrs. Maclean; although she barely appears later on); a nymphomaniac sexual predator (Sinead); and an undocumented immigrant prostitute (Trudy).

This is an absurdist book, and the characters are not meant to be taken entirely seriously. Which sometimes works and sometimes decidedly doesn't. For instance, this book is incredibly sexual but in that male literary author way which I absolutely hate. Everyone is Horny and No One Is Sexy (see also Jonathan Safran Foer and John Updike). This leads to uncomfortable authorial choices. Sinead, for instance, is an incredibly problematic character whose predatory behavior is criticized but also somewhat played for laughs.

I did really like the mixed media in this book. It was used in a way that I haven't seen much, if ever. The book includes photographs (which I think I've only ever seen in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children) in a very clever way. Some of the photographs don't just appear once - they re-appear later in the narrative. For instance, photos of Alisdair's beloved scavenged album first appear when he obtains the album, and then again when it is recovered after being stolen. This was very clever, and a unique use of mixed media. I tip my hat to Holdstock for this choice. There are also some letters, a news article, and graphs. It all works especially in the context of Sam's need to collect forgotten objects and also the overall structure of this book as a narrator looking back at a lost world. Most of the photos in the book are of people in the 1930s and 1960s - a time already gone during the "past" storyline. So they are doubly lost - photos of people no one in the 2017 timeline knows, and photos of a place which no longer exists in 2077.

And while I generally don't like "literary" contemporary fiction, I do appreciate some of the subtext going on in the text, and the use of a genre matter (apocalypse/future time) in a literary novel. It was also a fast, short read (under 300 pages), which thank goodness. More authors should learn from this.

This book had some room for improvement, and it looks like many readers did not like it given its 3.03 rating. But honestly I thought it was a lot better than a lot of popular literary darlings. It is unfortunate that in the decade since this book was published, Holdstock has not published much.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I ended up skimming through to the end. The writing was elegant and the joy of reading Holdstock's prose is the only thing that kept me going. At first I liked the story, particularly the growing hints pointing toward an upcoming apocalypse. But fairly early on the characters became too bizarre, and many were so unlikable that I had a hard time sticking it with it. Also, their stories were mostly separate from each other, and although it all began to tie together at the end, it took far too long for the narrative arc to cohere. If you're a fan of imaginative and (very) strange story telling, don't mind reading about extremely unlikable people, and are patient enough to wait for the pay-off, you might enjoy it.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book takes place on a few blocks in Edinburgh, Scotland during the two years before a massive asteroid crashes into Earth in 2017. Its impact causes a catastrophic event roughly comparable to the collision widely credited with the Great Extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, and it wipes out Europe, North America and Australia. The novel is narrated by one of the survivors of "the event" 60 years in the future who is reminiscing about some of the odd ball characters he/she knew, their strange behavior, etc. Everything is happening in the past. It is someone looking back and then reliving events.

[Caleigh MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a lot to like here. Interesting stories on a micro level. The individuals were complex, familiar and unique at the same time. And yet by the end, there was just too much going on—chaos in the narrative that made even simple scenes like Sam getting on a plane almost incomprehensible. It got to the point that I stopped caring about the thing as a whole. There’s so much that the reader has to keep track of and infer from the vaguest descriptions or clues that by the end I just had a headache and didn’t care anymore.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

As another reviewer mentioned, the idea of this book was a lot more promising than the execution. At first, it was interesting, but then it just sort of meandered off into a place where I found myself just not caring about any of the characters and being confused about when and who was doing the POV talking.