When winter came the cat began to spend more time indoors with them. Trudi thought they wouldn’t have been so cold if the cat didn’t steal the heat from their bodies in the night. But they had learned to love the cat, and love, once learned, is difficult to unlearn.
Icicles decorated the insides of the windows and Charlene and Trudi moved in frosty clouds of their own breath. They had to wear so many layers of clothes that they could hardly move. They ripped out the useless gas fire and opened up the old fireplace and burned everything that would burn, but they were still so cold that Trudi got frostbite in her toes.
Charlene shared Trudi’s bed now; it was too cold to sleep alone. They spooned each other for warmth, dreaming of feathered quilts and Witney wool blankets, old-fashioned eiderdowns and hot-water bottles. Trudi remembered the hot-water bottle she had when she was a child, in the shape of a small blue rubber teddy bear. Her twin sister, Heidi, had a pink one. Trudi wondered how her sister was. She wished they had been closer. She wished she could see Heidi one more time and tell her that she loved her.
If they had been able to leave the flat, they could have foraged in the parks of the city for leaves and seeds and berries, or in people’s houses for hidden caches of baked beans and cream crackers. If they could have left the flat, they might have discovered the contents of some overlooked delicatessen—peaches in Moscato wine, Madagascar green peppercorns, rose-petal champagne, panforte nero, Taleggio, and green figs in syrup.
“We could eat the cat,” Trudi said.
“No we couldn’t.”
“I went to the hospital?”
“When?”
“No, it’s a game, like the minister’s cat,” Trudi explained. “I went to the hospital because I had appendicitis, and so on—I went to the hospital because I had botulism, I went to the hospital because I had chilblains, I went to the hospital because I had dermatitis, enteritis, fever, gallstones, hepatitis, influenza, etcetera.”
“Or we could just be quiet,” Charlene said.
“No,” Trudi said, beginning to panic, “no, we mustn’t do that.”
The gods left the city, without ceremonies or farewells. The cat died quietly in his sleep one night before Charlene and Trudi even knew he was sick. They were upset for a long time over the cat.
“From now on,” Trudi said, “I only want good, simple things. A bushel of russet apples, a truckle of cheddar cheese, a firkin of bloodred wine. Clean linen sheets, rinsed in lavender water and then dried in the sun and the wind on an old-fashioned rope in an orchard. A good book, a small dog, a single strand of pearls.”
“My regrets, since you ask,” Charlene said, “include never having concentrated on rote learning. We could recite poems to each other, epics and sagas, odes and epithalamiums. We could revive the traditions of our oral culture, so long lost to us. Can you remember anything?”
“The king sits in Dunfermline town oh what can ail thee knight-at-arms they went to sea in a sieve fire and sleete and candle lighte beauty is truth truth beauty full fathom five western wind when wilt thou blow but at my back I always hear—”
“That’s enough.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
Charlene and Trudi lay in each other’s arms. They no longer had enough energy to move around. Instead they gazed at the stars in the skylight above the bed. One good thing about not having electricity was that the constellations and planets were now all clearly visible in the night sky. Neither Charlene nor Trudi could think of anything else that was good about not having electricity.
“One day archaeologists will find us and wonder about our lives,” Charlene said.
Trudi didn’t like the idea of being found by archaeologists. It was unsettling to think that one day, in the invisible, unreachable future, someone would dig them up and find them lying together like animals in a nest, like kittens in a cradle, and invent new lives for them. “Tell me a story,” she said to Charlene.
“I could tell you the story of the seven sisters who became the Pleiades.”
“I think we’ve had that one.”
“ ‘Marianne was thinking about lemons when she died’?”
“We’ve definitely had that one.”
“Her mother, Demeter, who rescued the world from endless winter? Jeri Zane—pioneer astrophysicist? The fish that swallowed a magic ring, the death of the Great God Pan, the man who woke up and found he was a cat, Aphrodite in love, the wolfkin and the princess, Tyler Zane’s Broadway success, the man who turned into a flower, the girl who turned into a cow, the endless series of transformations perpetrated by the gods—people turned into bats, larks, pigs, lionesses, bears, wolves, laurel bushes, nightingales, owls, partridges, springs, fountains, rivers, echoes—”
“Echoes?”
“Echoes. Rocks, poplars, ravens, pine trees, ospreys, dolphins, mountains, white doves, comets, stars—really the list is endless,” Charlene said. “Or how about Circe, who turned men into animals?”
“No, I don’t think I’ve heard that one.”
So Charlene told Trudi the story of the great witch Circe, and the story lasted all night long so that on the morning of the thousand and first day they were still awake when Helios left his magnificent eastern palace, with its columns of gold and bronze and its gables of ivory, and mounted his golden chariot and rose into the sky, the fiery manes of his horses flaming in the dark. His sister, Eos, had already heralded his arrival, spreading her embroidered golden skirts across the skies.
“Nothing dies,” Charlene whispered into Trudi’s ear. “All matter is transformed into other matter.”
“Or metempsychosis,” Trudi said weakly, “the transmigration of the soul. Into an insect, a tadpole, a bean. A lion, a vine, a baby.”
“A star would be nice,” Charlene said. “Or a constellation. A new constellation in the night sky where we could shine like precious diamonds. Are you still there?”
“I’m still here,” Trudi said. “It’s grown very dark, don’t you think? Keep talking. Tell me another story.”
“I can’t remember anymore,” Charlene said.
“Don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to:
Lauren Denby and Dr. John Menzies for the telomeres
Helen Clyne for a lot of things
Russell Equi for cars and bikes and roads
Eve Atkinson-Worden for the weddings
Sally Wray for the support
Ali Smith for the understanding
READING GROUP GUIDE
NOT THE
END
OF THE
WORLD
BY KATE ATKINSON
A Conversation
with Kate Atkinson
If the world were thrown into chaos, the end near, where would you most like to be, with whom, doing what, why?
With my daughters and my grandson, trying to look on the bright side.
Not the End of the World is your first collection, after three highly acclaimed novels. Did any of these stories begin as an idea for a novel? Do you have thoughts about what might happen to some of these characters after their stories end here?
They were always meant to be stories, I was very clear about that with myself. It had been a long time since I had written any stories and I was very concerned to find again the spontaneity that comes with the form—novels can seem very imprisoning sometimes. I rarely think about an afterlife for characters; they exist on the page and not beyond it. The only character who has a kind of half-life for me is Simon, the appalling adolescent from “Wedding Favors” and “Dissonance”—he sort of lurks on. One of my daughters helped me to invent him and we sometimes find ourselves saying to each other, “That’s what Simon would say/do.”
The influences apparent in Not the End of the World are as wide-ranging as Metamorphoses and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How do you think pop culture and classic literature inform our modern lives?
All the time, every
day, in our language, our philosophies, our beliefs, our stories. Both pop and classic equally. I always think culture’s just like a big snowball rolling through history, acquiring more “stuff” all the time. Which makes us lucky in some ways and unlucky in others—living near the end of western civilization we have a lot of “noise” to deal with but also many wonders.
Which story did you find most difficult to write and why? Which characters do you most and least identify with or sympathize with?
“Sheer Big Waste of Love.” I kept trying to write it and then leaving it. I finally realized it was because it was absolutely dark, no light, no humor, and so I went back and put some light in, gave Addison, the main character, a wife and child, and it worked. I probably altered about a paragraph in all but the difference for me was total.
I don’t think I identify with one character more than any other. I don’t identify with Simon (thank goodness), but I do have an unnatural fondness for him.
The characters in these stories inhabit the same world. Did you have a sense of how they would relate to one another and interact with one another before you began writing, or did the connections evolve as you went along?
I’d written about half the stories before I realized they were connected and that I wanted them to connect more, but I always wanted them to be able to stand on their own feet as individual stories, which they do, apart from the last one, which was never meant to. Charlene and Trudi bookend the collection because essentially they are Scheherazade, telling the intervening stories to keep themselves alive.
Your books are published to huge success not only in the U.K. and the United States, but also in translation in many foreign countries. How do different cultures respond to your work? Are there certain qualities more appreciated in some countries than in others? How do other cultures influence your writing?
I don’t really know how most countries respond—if I visit, they’re polite! I seem to be very popular in France, which is particularly gratifying.
Your most recent book, Case Histories, weaves three mysteries into one novel. How did Not the End of the World prepare you to handle the different story lines?
I think it made me much more aware of the possibilities inherent in carrying different story lines, but I was very unstructured in my approach to them in Case Histories; I just wrote it and didn’t think too much about it. What Not the End of the World gave me was a much greater interest in the internal monologue (Simon again) and the confidence to immerse myself in individual characters.
Questions and Topics for Discussion
Charlene and Trudi respond to the apocalyptic chaos around them in a peculiar way. Is their conversation surprising, given the circumstances? How might you and your best friend react differently? Are Charlene and Trudi’s actions at all natural? In what way?
How do you think Eddie’s relationship with his mother affects his attitude? Do you think June is a good role model for him?
The Zane sisters are extraordinary women, each in her own way. Do you know any women like them? How are their love affairs and relationships informed by one another? How would Meredith fare among your circle of friends?
Do you have any sympathy for Simon? Why? What aspects of his personality do you see in yourself? How is his rapport with Rebecca typical of sibling relationships? How is it different?
Missy and Arthur have an unusual relationship for a boy and his governess. How is Missy a good nanny? How is she not? Would you have enjoyed having Missy as a caretaker?
Fielding’s doppelganger has a lot more fun than Fielding ever does. What do you think that says about Fielding’s choices? If your doppelganger were free to do whatever he or she wanted, what would he or she be doing?
How have things changed for Charlene and Trudi in the end? How is their story linked to the other stories in the collection?
What does Not the End of the World suggest about the role of storytelling in our lives? Is storytelling simply a form of entertainment, or does it serve another function? How do the stories in this book help Charlene and Trudi endure?
How is pop culture important in Not the End of the World? How might the stories be different without the pop culture references?
Discuss the ways in which people at the edges of your life—the people you sometimes see at parties, who date your distant relatives, who pass you on the way to work—are living their own stories as well as influencing yours. Where, how often, and in what ways does your life overlap with theirs?
Kate Atkinson’s Top Ten Reads
(and Then Some)
1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Perhaps the best American novel (although see no. 10), or the best novel about America and the hollowness at the heart of the dream. The closing paragraphs of Gatsby are surely some of the most poignant and powerful ever written.
2. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The individuality of Vonnegut’s style is a curious yet perfect match for the pain of the emotional content. A humane, human book that always remains a work of art rather than biography, no matter how apparent the author’s presence.
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Mozart opera of novels and again a transcendent union of structure and content in which unhappy marriage is the reward for those who show a weakness of character and lifelong happiness is a province reserved only for those “who truly know themselves.”
4. Just William et al. by Richmal Crompton
The funniest English novels ever written?
5. What Maisie Knew by Henry James
The other side of childhood and James’s finest working of his preoccupation with the theme of innocence corrupted. James is the master of making what is not said the most important thing on the page.
6. Pricksongs and Descants by Robert Coover / Collected Stories by Donald Barthelme
Two of the most innovative of all American short story writers. Recklessly imaginative, they are both remarkable for the playfulness and sheer brio of their writing. Coover’s ingenuity and Barthelme’s absurdity made me look at writing in a different way. More than anyone else, these are the writers who made me want to be a writer myself.
7. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
Without these two books in my childhood I doubt whether my imagination would have developed at all.
8. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The finest American novel not written by an American. Perhaps the finest American novel ever (But see no. 1. And don’t forget no. 10.) No one can emulate Nabokov’s dizzyingly vertiginous prose and his command of the text.
9. Middlemarch by George Eliot
Eliot could write bad books (Romola) and half-brilliant books (Daniel Deronda— the first half), but in Middlemarch her serious intelligence produced a novel that no one else could have been capable of—a picture of society as an organic, living, breathing synthesis: order and disorder, hope and hopelessness, pride and humility, charity and greed. If only she had seen fit to marry Dorothea to Lydgate.
10. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The perfect novel.
… And I can’t believe there wasn’t room for 11: The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford, a novel about the wanton destruction caused by passion and bad behavior, written with the greatest delicacy and precision. I also really, really like Lee Child, Michael Chabon, and Jane Smiley’s Horse Heaven.
Look for the next Kate Atkinson novel,
Case Histories.
Also look for the most recent Kate Atkinson novel,
Life After Life.
Following is an excerpt from the opening pages of
Case Histories.
I
CASE HISTORY NO. 1 1970
Family Plot
How lucky were they? A heat wave in the middle of the school holidays, exactly where it belonged. Every morning the sun was up long before they were, making a mockery of the flimsy summer curtains that hung limply at their bedroom w
indows, a sun already hot and sticky with promise before Olivia even opened her eyes. Olivia, as reliable as a rooster, always the first to wake, so that no one in the house had bothered with an alarm clock since she was born three years ago.
Olivia, the youngest and therefore the one currently sleeping in the small back bedroom with the nursery-rhyme wallpaper, a room that all of them had occupied and been ousted from in turn. Olivia, as cute as a button they were all agreed, even Julia, who had taken a long time to get over being displaced as the baby of the family, a position she had occupied for five satisfying years before Olivia came along.
Rosemary, their mother, said that she wished Olivia could stay at this age forever because she was so lovable. They had never heard her use that word to describe any of them. They had not even realized that such a word existed in her vocabulary, which was usually restricted to tedious commands: come here, go away, be quiet, and—most frequent of all—stop that. Sometimes she would walk into a room or appear in the garden, glare at them, and say, Whatever it is you’re doing, don’t, and then simply walk away again, leaving them feeling aggrieved and badly done by, even when caught red-handed in the middle of some piece of mischief—devised by Sylvia usually.
Their capacity for wrongdoing, especially under Sylvia’s reckless leadership, was apparently limitless. The eldest three were (everyone agreed) “a handful,” too close together in age to be distinguishable to their mother so that they had evolved into a collective child to which she found it hard to attribute individual details and which she addressed at random—Julia-Sylvia-Amelia-whoever you are—said in an exasperated tone as if it were their fault there were so many of them. Olivia was usually excluded from this weary litany; Rosemary never seemed to get her mixed up with the rest of them.
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