The Two of Us at the End of the World by C A Fletcher - DNF review

What if one person was your whole world?

In the overgrown ruins of a world almost empty of people, the only person Mouse has ever known is Cat, the brave girl who carried him inland, away from the sickness that came from the sea. When strangers arrive with a choice to be made, nothing will ever be the same.

Almost two hundred years earlier, a couple are falling in love as the world is dying out. When they discover they are two of the few people still able to have a child, so do the authorities. They may be separated from Mouse and Cat by an insurmountable gulf of time, but some truths family comes in all shapes and sizes, so does love.

And even at the end of the world, hope dies last.

---

Sometimes you can admire what a book is doing without being able to stay with it.

✶ PRE-READING ✶

I was immediately drawn to the premise of The Two of Us at the End of the World, particularly because I've enjoyed other books by C. A. Fletcher that explore the end of humanity through mass infertility. Fletcher also has a habit of putting some Very Important Dogs into his stories, and I am absolutely not going to complain about that particular authorial signature.

The two-timeline structure also intrigued me. I liked the idea of seeing the end of the world from different perspectives and watching the pieces gradually fit together.

✶ POST-READING ✶

As I thought... there is a lot here that I liked. Fletcher has a real knack for making the end of the world feel personal rather than simply spectacular, and there are some lovely meditations on family, belonging and what we owe to other people when the structures of society begin to disappear.

The two timelines are particularly clever. One narrator's sections deliberately abandon some of the conventions we are used to seeing in fiction, because he has grown up having encountered only one other person. The rules of dialogue and storytelling that feel natural to us simply aren't meaningful to him in the same way.

I understood exactly what the formatting was trying to achieve.

It still made the book harder for me to read.

That distinction matters. I don't think the choice is inherently bad, or that it shouldn't have been made. In fact, I think it's an interesting piece of storytelling. It just meant that I was spending more effort working out how to read the page than I wanted to, and eventually that became a barrier between me and the story.

I read around 32% before putting the book down, and although I later skipped ahead to around 85% to see where things were going, I wasn't finding myself drawn back to it. There was plenty here that I admired, but admiration wasn't quite enough to make me want to keep reading.

There's also an interesting possibility that this belongs to the same world as A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World. There are enough echoes to make me wonder, although there's no real way to know from what I've read - and I certainly wouldn't want to claim a connection that isn't there.

I suspect this will be a book that works extremely well for some readers. The ideas are strong, the structure is inventive, and there is real emotional thought behind the story.

It just wasn't enough to keep me attached to the book.

✦ RECOMMENDATIONS ✦

Book Recommendation: A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C. A. Fletcher, particularly if the combination of post-apocalyptic survival, human connection and Very Important Dogs appeals to you.

TV or Movie Recommendation: Station Eleven. Both are interested in what remains of humanity when the world as we know it disappears, and in the relationships and memories that become more important when everything else falls away.

✧ VIBE CHECK ✧

A colour palette: faded blue, weathered grey and the green of things stubbornly growing back.

A soundtrack: sparse piano and distant, echoing vocals.

A season: late autumn, when the world is becoming quieter and you can feel winter approaching.

A mood: melancholy, thoughtful and quietly hopeful.

A scent: wet grass, old paper and woodsmoke.

Final Thoughts

I read approximately 32% of The Two of Us at the End of the World before deciding not to continue, although I did skip ahead to around 85% to get a sense of where the story was going. As such, this is a DNF review rather than a review of the complete novel.

The Two of Us at the End of the World publishes in March 2027. I received a free copy via NetGalley and am giving an honest review.