The High House: Shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award

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This postapocalyptic, introspective drama is all about the love of family, isolation, hopelessness, and the will to go on. Readers will be asking the question, is it better to remember the life you had before and all that’s been lost, or to start fresh, only knowing this new existence? This novel is perfect for those who enjoy beautifully written, thought-provoking stories."

The High House by Jessie Greengrass, review: affecting but

The tours are tailored to meet the national curriculum in various subjects. Weddings and Civil Ceremonies Climate change and family drama converge to create a melancholic yet fairly formulaic story in this apocalyptic sophomore novel by Jessie Greengrass. That evening, Francesca came home. I don’t know where she had been – which of the many places, savaged by weather, that might have needed her expertise, and her anger – but she smelled of mould and filthy water and she was exhausted. She looked thin. After Pauly was in bed I sat with her and father at the kitchen table.

The High House

The winter before, Pauly had found a bird spotter’s guidebook on the shelves at home, and since then he had spent hours looking at it, making me read out the names of the birds, their identifying features, the descriptions of their eggs—but whereas this information had left my mind, running out of it like water, Pauly had stored it, reproducing details at will. Greengrass is excellent on the complex currents that can develop between people who live in close proximity: the way Pauly’s birth subtly reconfigures Caro’s relationship with her father and stepmother; Sal’s dislike of Caro, with her physical fragility and obvious grief. The fact that both women are orphans is not a source of common feeling but a trigger for judgment, or even jealousy. When Sal observes that the newly arrived Caro and Pauly “seem happy now, anyway”, her grandfather’s response conveys a great deal with very few words: What will you do? father asked me again, and Francesca said, That’s a pretty stupid question, under the circumstances.

The High House by Jessie Greengrass | Goodreads

The key features of the period preceding Greengrass's flood are all too familiar: species death on an increasing scale, bizarre weather conditions, dwindling insect populations, and gradually-encroaching environmental blight. For me, and I suspect many other readers, Greengrass's portrayal of her characters’ response to these potentially cataclysmic shift’s equally recognisable. To take one example Caro, Francesca’s stepdaughter, is unable to deal with her fear of what the future might hold so she tries not to think about it: her mental state perpetually suspended between overwhelming anxiety and deflection/denial’s particularly well-realised, although what Greengrass’s aiming for in chronicling this is less clear to me. I’m not sure if Greengrass is offering her readers an elegy in anticipation of certain doom, an oblique stab at some kind of wake-up call or, perhaps, a cathartic means of rehearsing for an inevitably bleak, real-life outcome through fiction. If Greengrass's piece’s intended to arouse some sort of practical reaction I’m not convinced it’ll have any actual impact beyond brief jolts of recognition. My perspective’s not entirely based on Greengrass’s vision, frankly I’m not persuaded that cli-fi's politically significant in any concrete sense. I don't see people reading this, then laying it down and rushing out to join Extinction Rebellion or any of the groups actively working to avert looming, environmental devastation. My only complaint is the way the story is structured. It’s oddly told in only five chapters with multiple scene breaks. The scene breaks made it more bearable but then there were POV switches (clearly marked within the chapter) that made it feel like it could have been broken down a bit more to feel more readable? I likely wouldn’t have even noticed but I read it on kindle and irks me when it says I have an hour left in my chapter. Greengrass isn’t adding to the more sensationalist offerings in the eco-dystopia vein; her interest lies in the relationships between her characters, and how they came to survive in the first place. Not that this provides much in the way of action or tension either, because her narrators display little agency of their own. Francesca – Caro’s stepmother, who had Pauly when Caro was 14 – is the puppet master pulling the strings. A climatologist, she fortified the smallholding in preparation for the coming flood. Unquestionably the most intriguing character here, she is portrayed as an enigma, described only through the eyes of others – a risky gamble that doesn’t quite pay off. There are some beautiful lines about grief, such as Caro admitting that thinking of her late father “was unbearable. I could feel the shape of the empty space his hands had left behind”. Jessie Greengrass uses elegiac sentences as weapon in this melancholic tale of coastal erosion ... The story is haunted by an old world that got washed away."Eine sehr nahe, sehr realistische Zukunft wird also konzipiert, in der unsere Welt, respektive die Menschheit, infolge des Klimawandels nach und nach untergeht. Die Protagonisten in Form einer Klima-Aktivistenfamilie, die Eltern beide aus dem universitären Bereich, haben jahrelang gewarnt, versucht, die Öffentlichkeit mit Vorträgen, Artikeln und Aktionen aufzurütteln, aber nichts wurde unternommen. I was fourteen the day Francesca brought Pauly home from the hospital. Father and I spent the morning cleaning the house, polishing and sweeping and dusting, until every room smelled of beeswax and vinegar. There was a bunch of sunflowers on the table in the hall, stood up in a water jug. Yes, Francesca replied, I am. I think I am. We always knew a tipping point would come. It’s a surprise, really, that it’s taken so long. Despite its flaws, The High House is frequently penetrating and moving on grief, childcare, the lies we tell ourselves and group dynamics. Greengrass’s account of global disaster hinges on the petty joys and annoyances of everyday life. Francesca might brand these lethal distractions in the face of impending doom, but Greengrass suggests they are a form of self-protection. Allmählich wachsen alle in ihre Rolle hinein, finden sich in die neue Situation, wie es Menschen schon seit Urzeiten konnten, und leben ein sehr einfaches Leben, das relativ gemächlich abläuft und gelegentlich durch den Kampf gegen die Natur unterbrochen wird. Opa Grandy stirbt auch völlig unspektakulär an einer Krankheit, die durch sein Alter verursacht wird.

The High House: Shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award

Already shortlisted for a Costa Book Award, this novel is both horrifying - and a work of art. Heartbreaking but also heartwarming. As many others are saying it is literally impossible to put down and the combin Nun wird erzählt, wie dieses Quartett lebt, wie die Menschen im Dorf nach und nach verschwinden, die Sommertouristen nicht mehr kommen, wie sie sich selbst versorgen, mit allen Problemen, wie der Kälte im Winter, der anstrengenden Nahrungsmittelproduktion und dem sorgsamen Umgang mit den Vorräten, die nicht mehr erzeugt werden können. Die Katastrophe bricht nicht mit einem Paukenschlag ins Leben der Protagonisten ein, sondern es passiert ein ganz langsames Fade-Out. Es scheint fast so, als wäre diese Wohngemeinschaft wieder bei der Gesellschaft der ersten Menschen in Europa angekommen, selbstverständlich mit ein paar Luxusvorräten, wie Antibiotika und Morphium ausgestattet. A climate scientist and her husband prepare a place for their young son and older daughter in the event of a climate disaster. High house is where four people will come as our climate spirals out of control and into a full fledged climate armegeddon. Although this is being called a post apocalyptic novel, I believe it a prescient warning of events that will actually happen and that in many ways is happening now.People might enjoy warm, sunny days in winter, in places where it used to be cold for months at a time. But there is nothing to enjoy about drought, wildfires, worsening storms, heat waves, and rising waters.