When I first heard about The Last Day, I was intrigued. The debut from Andrew Hunter Murray who, among many other things, is a QI Elf, is set in a world where, ‘forty years ago, a solar catastrophe began to slow the planet’s rotation to a stop. Now, one half of the globe is permanently sunlit, the other half trapped in an endless night.’ It seems an interesting premise; especially given the setting in Britain, a country which once held the epithet, ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire’.
Certainly, the world of post apocalypse Britain that is one of the few habitable areas left in the globe, is one in which the country is struggling to maintain its supremacy and the old way of doing things rather than adapting to the world that has drastically changed. I somewhat foolishly mentioned the setting to a friend who studied physics and is a self-confessed ‘space nerd’. I fielded several incredulous questions about magnetic poles (late in the book we do learn they are deteriorating), the earth’s molten core, the atmosphere, and orbit. Suspension of disbelief is necessary for a lot of sci-fi books, and given Hunter Murray’s background, I’m sure his research was thorough. However, the science – especially given the fact that the central character, Ellen Hopper, is a scientist, could have been more explicitly defined. I was left with the general understanding that the world may not actually remain habitable, but perhaps that eventuality wouldn’t come to pass. That uncertainty hung over the novel’s conclusion, which made it feel lacklustre in a way that it didn’t need to be. To that end, the ending felt a little abrupt, and provided assumed resolutions rather than a definite ending.
The plot follows Dr Ellen Hopper who has isolated herself from most of society by taking a job working for the repressive British government on an offshore rig, charting the ocean currents that have been altered by the new state of the world. She is abruptly brought back to mainland to speak with her dying university mentor, Edward Thorne, who holds a secret that could ruin the British government. This sets her off on a search across the corner of the world struggling to exist in order to discover what Thorne knew. The fundamental elements of the storyline are solid. Indeed, the film and TV rights to the book have already been bought, and it will likely be transposed into a really engaging piece of watching. That being said, despite several of the promotional claims, The Last Day isn’t really a thriller. It’s slow paced, with the interspersed flashback chapters drip feeding information that probably could have been revealed in a more dramatic or climactic manner. Had there been no reference to it as a thriller, I probably would have enjoyed the pace more rather than waiting for it to pick up.
Some of the key elements to the world could have been established a little faster or with more efficiency. For instance, explanation regarding the Americans who had been resettled in the Southern parts of Great Britain seemed a little convoluted, likewise the fact that they had brought nuclear weapons with them (and presumably the capacity to launch them?), and the tense relationship Britain had with the remaining European states, or how their political structure and climate differed from Britain. Despite all this, the world was an interesting one.
The immediate point of comparison which sprang to my mind was A Boy and his Dog a the End of the World’ which I had the delightful task of reading and reviewing last year. While A Boy and his Dog offers an optimistic portrayal of how people can navigate a shattered world, The Last Day views the world with a certain pessimism, portraying a social environment that’s a mixture of a World War II mutual suspicion and a McCarthyist America. Certainly, in the current political climate, I want to believe in the world Fletcher outlined, but I worry that Hunter Murray’s depiction is more realistic.
For a debut, this is a very solid piece of writing, with an interesting premise at its core. While there are a few issues with the pacing and execution, it’s an easy read with writing that at times is quite lovely. At the very least, this is a thought provoking read that encourages questions about who we are and what we are willing to do when the end of the world arrives, and we are offered a chance of survival.
The Last Day is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of February 4th 2020.
Will you be picking up The Last Day? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
HALF THE WORLD IS DARK. ONLY SHE CAN SAVE THE LIGHT. A high-concept, utterly original debut thriller which envisages a world on the edge of catastrophe, perfect for readers who loved Robert Harris’ Fatherland, Station 11, and The Wall by John Lanchester.
A WORLD HALF IN DARKNESS. A SECRET SHE MUST BRING TO LIGHT. 2059. The world has stopped turning.
One half suffers an endless frozen night; the other, nothing but burning sun.
Only in a slim twilit region can life survive.
In an isolationist Britain, Ellen Hopper receives a letter from a dying man.
It contains a powerful and dangerous secret.
One that those in power will kill to conceal…
Why is it that NO-ONE has picked up the HUGE hole in the premise – the planet is said to have stopped ROTATING, not ceased REVOLVING around the sun.
This means that the side of the earth that faces the sun when rotation stops, will be facing AWAY from the sun 6 months later in the revolution around the sun, because the earth is not rotating – in other words, there will NOT be a continuous day on one hemisphere and a continuous night on the other – rather, EVERY part of the earth will have a 3-month day, a 3-month sunset, a 3-month night and a 3-month sunrise.
Furthermore, the earth is still TILTED on its axis, so there WILL still be seasons.
It’s explained in the 3rd chapter? The rotation has slowed so that one side is always facing the sun, exactly how the same side of the moon always faces the Earth.
Believe it or not, the author did think of this.