Adrian J. Walker

(2014) An asteroid strikes the northern hemisphere and England takes the hardest hit. Ed and his family are split up when rescue helicopters take his wife & kids south to Falmouth harbor to catch ships to South Africa. Ed meets up with 4 others stranded in the north who decide to try to make it to Falmouth. As the roads are pretty much toast, they eventually find that the only way to make progress is to run. A few major stumbling blocks get in their way, but Ed & Bryce survive the trip only for Ed to find that he has just missed joining his family, but not before being able to say goodbye. He later reconciles himself as he finds an abandoned house to stay in as he tries to repair a sailboat he has found to make that journey.https://shelf-awareness.com/max-issue.html?issue=251#m537In The End of the World Running Club, Adrian Walker (From the Storm) uses the end of the world as we know it to skillfully probe big, significant questions of what it means to be human, what it means to survive and what happens when merely surviving is not enough.Edgar Hill is not the most together guy in the world. Father of two young children, he drinks too much, doesn't exercise, phones it in at his job, leaves the bulk of childcare to his wife and stumbles through each day. "What if this all just went away?" he muses. "What if it all just blew away?" And then, one day, it does. With only a few hours' notice, the United Kingdom is struck by multiple asteroids, obliterating the country and leaving Ed and his family buried in their home's small cellar, waiting for help.Walker's ability to imagine a post-apocalyptic world in crisp detail is on full display in the early pages of The End of the World Running Club. Telling details of life pre-apocalypse are scattered throughout Ed's recollections of his family's time trapped in their cellar and vivid descriptions of the upturned world into which the Hills emerge upon their rescue: most of the country has been destroyed, cities demolished and roads blocked. The Hill family is taken to an army barracks near Edinburgh, where they wait, with their rescuers, for news from the rest of the world.The inclusion of these pre-apocalyptic details, in particular, allows Walker not only to highlight how much of the world is changed by the asteroid strike--but how much stays the same. Ed and his wife still fight. Friends still comfort each other. People still fall in love. And a few see opportunity in the power vacuum left by the collapse of civilization. Some people give up. Some people endure.When Ed's wife and children are evacuated to the southern coast of England to await the arrival of rescue boats and he is accidentally left behind, Ed chooses to be someone who endures. With the roads impassable, Ed and the small group of survivors left with him set out on foot to cross the United Kingdom. Their journey quickly evolves into an ultimate running adventure, as the group must traverse dozens of miles a day to have any hope of arriving at the coast before the last boats depart. This race against the clock sets the pace of the rest of The End of the World Running Club, adding an element of suspense to an already compelling story.As Ed and his ragtag group struggle to trek some 500 miles, the focus of The End of the World Running Club shifts from detailing the end of the world to exploring various characters' reactions to it. Most centrally, that is Ed, who narrates the novel and whose transformation over the span of a few hundred pages is most remarkable; he grows from a layabout who did little more than what his body demanded ("eat, sleep, stay still") to a man who will run 30 miles a day to reach his family. But alongside him, readers get to know a cast of colorful and multi-faceted characters: Harvey, the aging Australian who once ran across a different country; Bryce, a bear of a man who has an unexpected soft side; Grimes, a female soldier who sees herself as the group's protector; and Richard, a once well-off father who still clings to shadows of classism."It's hard being a human," Ed says. "Most of the time we're just blind idiots seeking joy in a world full of fear and pain. We have no idea what we're doing, and on the rare occasions when we get things right, we're just lucky. Our lives are filled with the humdrum: dust and noise with no meaning. And yet they contain moments that seem to mean something, something we can't describe but want to."The End of the World Running Club is full of small moments of philosophical musings like this one, in which Ed reflects on the end of the world as it relates to the human condition, and to his own. Perfectly balanced by the suspenseful race to the coast and the number of less-than-pleasant characters the running club encounters along their route, these moments of philosophy make Ed's story all the more emotional.Though readers may never face the extreme situations Ed and his companions endure, much of their experience will feel relatable and even, at times, familiar. In that, The End of the World Running Club proves a great success as a novel of the apocalypse: one that focuses not on the nightmares that the end of the world might bring, but on what it takes to find meaning amid such horrors. --Kerry McHugh… (meer)

I LOVED how Adrian Walker had the two perspectives in the book, one of the dog and the other of the owner. There were times when I actually felt more bonded to the dog, Lineker. The back story is rather interesting, especially considering the current state of affairs happening in the US. A breakdown of society and a take over of a political party who eliminates those who do not "fit in," or conform. Rather scary, if you ask me. The character development is great, especially of the two main characters, Reginald and Lineker. By the end of the book, I could see how they had grown so much in such a short amount of time because of what they had endured. The other characters were believable as well, but they weren't the central characters so the story wasn't centrally focused on them. It was focused on what drives the human spirit through the good and the bad. Can love conquer over the desire for power? A very good read.… (meer)

Vorab: Ich habe nicht das Buch gelesen, sondern das komplett gelesene Hörbuch gehört.

Zu Beginn war die Geschichte etwas verwirrend, da nicht immer sofort klar war, was "jetzt gerade" stattfindet und wann es sich um eine Rückblende handelte.

Nach ein paar Kapiteln nahm das Geschehen ordentlich an Fahrt auf und wurde sehr spannend. Die einzelnen Charakteren waren vom Autor und vom Leser sehr gut umgesetzt und so konnte man sie einfach auseinanderhalten und sich mit ihnen vertraut machen. Einzelne Figuren waren ziemlich detailliert ausgearbeitet und man konnte auch die Veränderungen in ihnen und ihrem Charakter "live" miterleben.

Nach einem ziemlich abwechslungsreichen und spannenden Bereich wurde das Buch im letzten Teil irgendwie verworren und speziell das Ende selbst hat mir weniger gut gefallen. (Die plötzlich auftauchende Sache mit dem Virus z.B., von dem vorher nie jemand gesprochen hatte, der wahnsinnig gefährlich war und trotzdem seltsamerweise nicht viel Platz im Roman eingenommen hat, klärte sich dann aber auf, als ich gesehen habe, dass es einen zweiten Teil gibt, in den der Autor scheinbar überleiten wollte.)

Insgesamt war es aber interessant, zu sehen, wie sich die Menschheit nach der Meinung des Autors in (bz. nach) einem absoluten Katastrophenfall verhalten würde. Wer keine "Endzeit-geschichten" bzw. "Post-Apokalyptischen Abenteuer" im Stil von Mad Max etc. mag, dem würde ich von dem Buch aber eher abraten.… (meer)

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me this copy in return for an honest review.

Actually 4.5 stars.
I loved this book. I am not a runner and never will be, but this isn't a book about running so much as it is about the will to survive the end of the world. I really liked the main character Ed. He is not someone who is transformed into a hero by the end of the world, he still has all the same character flaws and it isn't until he loses his family that he finds the will to make changes. He actually reminds me of Ed, the sidekick from Shaun of the Dead - lovable, but a bit useless. There are some great passages in this book. One of my favourites is "the living would run through the dust of the dead, just as they always had done". It really sums up the feelings of hopelessness and hopefulness that pervade the whole novel. This will be one of those books whose characters are going to be with me for a while.
Highly recommended.… (meer)