The End We Start From - Meagan Hunter

"In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds."
Set in the not so distant future when the oceans have risen dramatically and drowned much of England, the main character has just given birth to her son when she has to leave London to go North. We follow her from place to place, meeting people, losing people, finding people. The plot is near irrelevant though: it is more a meditation on motherhood, on beginnings and endings, on love and loss. All the characters are only referred to by their initials, leaving the reader at a distance and rendering this very personal tale relatively universal.

The story is told in short, sparse paragraphs, with quotes from the book of Genesis, creation and the flood, interspersed between certain segments. The writing is stunningly sparse, otherworldly and really unique. It gets under your skin. This was done so well, but there was one hurdle I could not overcome. The constant use of initials, bugged me to no end, and also made this short book confusing, trying to sort out and remember who was who. Possibly this was done to show that in a society collapse, an environmental disaster, names no longer matter, only survival does, but for me it lessened the impact of the story bring told. Having said that, I loved the structure. There are beautiful passages of a new mother's awareness of the baby she holds in her arms. Eerie and haunting, a little hopeful. 

I found the entire story to be terribly anticlimactic. After the following these characters through the events of the book, it just fizzles out. Nothing dramatic or life changing happens, we just end up where we started. 

Definitely worth a read from a prose point of view, but not from a plot or character one. 
Age Rating 13+. Nothing untoward happens.