Longlisted for the 2026 Booker prize, this novel has an unstructured and disjointed 'plot' and lacks coherent characters ... which is, I think, the point, since it is exploring a post-apocalyptic dystopia in which even geography is fluid and very little makes sense.
Phillip Tennent, one of a community of beachcombers, rescues something seemingly organic and alive from the sea. His murderous grandmother, a painter, doesn't want it in her house. He considers selling it to Hampson who runs some sort of research facility from a remote rectory, seeking to make contact with the cosmos.
Set in an England which has been invaded by the iGhetti - aliens from another dimension, projections from the astral sphere, consequences of human imaginations, who knows? - with refugees abandoning their SUVs and boarding ships to leave these shores. This is a post-apocalyptic fantasy. In some ways life carries on as normal: there seems to be no problem getting food to eat or fuel for cats but the art galleries have been abandoned. But little makes sense. The characters' actions seem almost random. The plot is a sequence of events. Surrealism rules as the reader struggles to understand. In this way, the novel reflects the breakdown of society.
This is a world where location becomes vague. “He had found his way to her along the coast as if blindfold, relying on some internal compass of nostalgia.” (1: A house on the borderland) When moving north towards London from the English south coast, the sea appears to be on the left. The Continent is shrouded in mist and may not exist anymore: Phillip's grandmother Marnie obsessively and repetitively paints signs asking "HOW CAN YOU MISPLACE A CONTINENT". Memories become unreliable. Humans frequently suffer moments, which they call, 'bad patches', when dreams seem to take over waking consciousness: “Generally, a patch had a more public narrative as well as a more obvious one. It placed you in the position of an accidental spectator. Everyone saw roughly the same thing, as though the world was patiently replaying an extract from its repertoire for an audience that would never quite understand it.” (1: Lost species)
Everything is transient and shifting, even smells. “There was a faint compound smell - fish and salt, perfume and fried food. For a moment it seemed like a language, with a shifting, impermanent syntax: but when she listened it had nothing to say.” (1: Limit case)
The first section is entitled 'War in Heaven' which has connotations of Milton's Paradise Lost. Harrison seems to be saying that we are on the verge of losing "this other Eden, demi-paradise" (to quote John of Gaunt in Shakespeare's Richard II). Perhaps the iGhetti are the rebel angels. Tennent's girlfriend Alice, once the wife of a man who was paid a million pounds for a month's work, becomes one of the emigrants who flees England for the uncertainties of abroad. And Hampson, the scientist searching for truth, notes that “There aren't many anagrams of the word insect.” (1: Hampson's notebooks.) Actually there are a few. Incest is one, and nicest another but I suspect Hampson is aiming for ‘scient’ which means ‘knowing’ or ‘aware’. If this really is an allegory of the Fall, we must remember that Adam and Eve were damned for eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The knowledge being the key, especially for Hampson, searching after truth.
Perhaps this is also a condemnation of capitalism. Does the name of the iGhetti come from the acquisitive cry of greed: 'I get it!'? They focus their attack on the City of London, cradle of capitalism. But capitalism has spread, even to the coast with its typical seaside attractions: “The amusement arcade ... is the perfect miniature of capitalism, every attraction screaming to be heard above the next; every one of them offering something you can't have.” (1: Dear Phillip)
I adored Harrison's The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again which introduced elements of surrealism into a relatively normal narrative. I'm less certain about this novel which seems to have taken a further step into nonsense. Perhaps I'm too conventional. I sought to impose order, to understand, and perhaps the message of the novel is that it is - or will be in the post-apocalyptic dystopia to which we seemed doomed - impossible to make sense of catastrophe.
If nothing else, the lack of a structured plot or ordinary character motivations, and the sometimes shifting syntax, is resonant with the theme of a world become uncertain and chaotic.
Whether you 'like' the novel or not, it is impossible not to admire Harrison's creativity. And there are moments where the prose ascends into the stratosphere.
It's well worth reading the review of this book by Max Puffins: https://maxpuffins.substack.com/p/book-review-the-end-of-everything
Selected quotes:
- “The beachcombers had their limits. Their superstitions gave the tideline its social structures and distinctive quality on the palate.” (1: Tidelines)
- “The hinterland was dark, a little more threatening, with its flattened hashmark of streets and its differing sets of rules.” (1: Tidelines)
Published in 2026 by Serpent's Tail
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