The End of the Day

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The End of the Day

By: Claire North

Narrated by: Peter Kenny

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About this listen

Charlie meets everyone - but only once. You might meet him in a hospital, in a war zone, or at the scene of traffic accident. Then again, you might meet him at the North Pole - Charlie gets everywhere. Sometimes he is sent as a courtesy, sometimes as a warning. Either way, this is going to be the most important meeting of your life.

The End of the Day is the stunning new story from Richard and Judy Book Club author Claire North: the voice behind the word-of-mouth best-seller The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.

2017, The Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award, Short-listed

Claire NorthPeter KennyLittle, Brown Audio

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Literary Fiction

Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

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I finished this one today, and while it would be more logical to wait until I've absorbed this book a bit over the next few days, I feel the need to get something down.

First of all - the familiar. This is another high-concept fantasy set squarely in the modern world. As usual, the globe is suitably trotted. Our hero visits (among other places) Greenland, Belarus, the USA, Nigeria and London. And he is a bit of a hero, as well. He's Charlie, the Harbinger of Death, originally from Birmingham and working for an office in Milton Keynes and.... he goes before. If that concept sounds a bit Terry Pratchett, it is, but that's pretty much where the comparison ends.

Some of the satirical elements evident particularly in the Sudden Appearance of Hope are here too - the book is very funny in places and horrifying in others. The main torture scene towards the end of the book is so sustained and well drawn that it's quite shocking. Elsewhere, however, the usual thriller elements are largely absent, replaced by an episodic but fascinatingly melancholic meditation on (it seems to me): Mortality, humanity, and the human spirit. It's also a book that could only have written during this turbulent last year. Brexit is mentioned and while Trump isn't, the system that elected him is. The death of reason is an important theme, particularly within the context of the irrational destruction of the earth in the name of big business.

Much is left unsaid and unexplained in the book, and I'm still dissecting what it all means, so for now I'm giving it a "cautious" four stars, since the ride is, as always, magnificent, even if the end result might not be quite as profound as Claire / Catherine wants it to be. But then again it might be. Five starts go to the great Peter Kenny, who delivers what must be the performance of his career. The man is a virtuoso, plain and simple.

Claire has yet to come up with another "concept" as clever and mind-bending as that in he First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but this new book is definitely a more mature and confident piece of writing.

So, er, anyway, I liked it. I'm just not quite sure how much yet.