The Stranding by Kate Sawyer:
As we tread gingerly into Autumn, we approach “Super Thursday” - the first one in September, when all the big books for Christmas start to arrive. Do we really need Paddy McGuinness’ autobiography, My Lifey? Probably not. Do we need Ed Ball’s cookery book/memoir? Possibly. Personally, I’m holding off for Alan Rickman’s diaries next Christmas.
The Stranding is the kind of book that will haunt your dreams. After finishing it, you will need either a good lie down or a good cry. Possibly both, at the same time. It’s that good, that emotional and by far and away the best book I’ve read for years.
If you want to be flippant, it’s a shaggy whale story. Ruth leaves behind loving parents, a distant friendship and a bad relationship to fulfil a lifelong dream of working with whales. As she tries to save one on a New Zealand beach, The Earth dies screaming. Her and a photographer shelter in its mouth and emerge to build a new world.
If that sounds a fantastical concept, you’d be right. Sawyer delights in both the biblical and literary allusions. What makes it such an entertaining read is the sheer, gorgeous craft of the book. It’s constructed in a binary fashion, alternating between chapters of Kate’s life “before” and “after”, beginning with her arriving on the beach and ending some twenty years later.
One of the novel’s best narrative tricks is the apocalypse itself. It’s a nuclear war which starts on Christmas Day (I know, cheery). But we never really learn why. Other characters refer to darkening events, but Ruth wilfully ignores the news, pursuing a relationship with a man who is both married and abusive, having a brief fling with a colleague and becoming slowly disenchanted with life. As she arrives in New Zealand and realises all flights to Europe are cancelled and she can’t call her parents, she learns the truth she has ignored for so long.
Ultimately, we can view that as a narrative gamble, but it’s one that pays off. Ruth is a tragic heroine, her rejoices in her own feminine power in a much different, harsher world.
It sounds like the proverbial grim read, but it’s not. This is an uplifting, but not didactic book. If it has someone kind of moral or message, it’s that what we leave behind when we die is more important; than struggling with the minutiae of our individually flawed humanity.
So, this should be enough to convince you to buy a copy. Pack a bag for the end of the world. Prepare to be moved, impressed and entertained by a stunning piece of work.
