The High House: Shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award

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The High House: Shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award

The High House: Shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award

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What will you do? father asked me again, and Francesca said, That’s a pretty stupid question, under the circumstances. This was beautifully written and told in the voices of the three younger people who live in the high house! They were silent for a long time then, and I stood very still in the corridor and thought of Pauly, the way his body twitched in his sleep, the tense look he got when Francesca was there, and how it was not hard at all for me to tell if he was happy or not. At last Francesca said, The High House is written from the POV of three characters - a young woman who grew up with her grandfather along the British coast, a young woman whose step-mother is a climate change activist, and the little boy who is her step-brother. In this powerful, highly anticipated novel from an award-winning author, four people attempt to make a home in the midst of environmental disaster.

The High House” Takes a Surviving the End of the World in “The High House” Takes a

But I had this one on my shelf as a result of Jenna’s stellar review, and was prompted to read it this week by a news article describing the disappearance of islands off the coast of Virginia as a result of rising water levels. Brought the topic close to home since that’s just a couple of hours away.

Table of Contents

Francesca, face taut with fury, stood up and, going into the corner of the room, put both hands against the walls. It used to be that Pauly needed me, and so I looked after him. I thought it was as simple as a question and its answer, and didn’t think about the ways that his small person might be an answer to something in its turn. Now things are the other way about. On bad days, when I can’t sit still, when my head aches and I want to sleep but sleep won’t come, when my longing for father and for Francesca is so great that I can hardly stand it, then I follow Pauly around. I shadow him. I know he finds it hard. I know that I should pull myself together. The novel’s verisimilitude is striking...it’s done with restraint and propelled by finely observed dynamics between characters who grapple with survivors’ guilt and ungraspable truths ... Described in measured, meditative prose, humanity’s paralysis is painful to read: the myopic faith in the status quo, the fearful waiting game ... This sobering prophecy of collective guilt is also a hypnotic elegy to nature, and our vanishing place in it. " In a probably not-so-distant future, where climate change is ravaging the world, where storms are off-the-charts, unpredictable, and cause mass destruction, erasing entire cities and islands off the map and changing coastlines, we follow the story of four characters eeking out a meager survival in an undisclosed location off the coast of England. The house is called High House, and the characters we follow are primarily Sally and Caro, though we get glimpses of Pauly and third party inclusion of Grandy, Sally’s Grandfather. However, I think that at least for those reading it in (e-)print, the story would have been better presented in the third person rather than the first. Their personalities were not different enough, their way of speaking was the same.

The High House | High House, Broad Lane Fillongley, Coventry The High House | High House, Broad Lane Fillongley, Coventry

Paulys Eltern waren Journalisten und Umweltaktivisten. Erst Jahre später wird deutlich, wie akribisch seine Mutter Francesca die Zuflucht ihres einzigen Kindes nach einer globalen Umweltkatastrophe geplant hatte. Das High House auf einer Kiesbank in der Flussmündung, fernab von anderen Menschen gelegen, war völlig autark, vorausgesetzt, seine Bewohner hatten gelernt mit Wassermühle, Trinkwasserbrunnen und Kohleherd umzugehen. Der drohende Weltuntergang war schon immer Francescas Thema gewesen. Sie konnte sich darüber aufregen, dass andere Menschen in den Tag hinein lebten, während sie unermüdlich um die Welt reiste, um deren Bewohner in letzter Minute noch aufzurütteln. Als Paulys ältere Halbschwester Caroline die Verantwortung für ihren Bruder übernimmt und mit ihm ins High House flüchtet, beginnt für sie ein neues Leben, als wären die Geschwister außer Sally und ihrem Grandy auf der Landzunge die einzigen Menschen. The shortlist for the first novel award also features a postapocalyptic world. In Kate Sawyer’s The Stranding, a woman hides from a cataclysmic event inside a beached whale in New Zealand, in what judges called “an immersive end of the world story full of hope and imagination”. There was to be an exhibition. There were lots of pictures like his, apparently – of waiters, pastry cooks, valets, bellboys.’It is very difficult to do this book, The High House by Jessie Greengrass, the justice it deserves in a review. I am worried about putting people off when mentioning that the central theme is one of climatic catastrophe and how four people cope with it thanks to the forward thinking of one. Sometimes, on the cusp of sleep, I can still hear them, father and Francesca. Father says, I love you, Caro, and Francesca, interrupting, calls, There isn’t time— Visit the Civil War Room where King Charles 1 and Prince Rupert stayed during their brief visit to the town; view the Stuart Bedroom with its magnificent four poster bed; admire the elegant splendour of the Wallpaper Room with its Georgian displays; visit Mr Marson in his Edwardian Shop; and observe the grand comfort of the Victorian Room. I said to father, when he came home from work because the school had called to tell him I had left.



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