The End of the World Running Club: The ultimate race against time post-apocalyptic thriller

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This book worked to remain rooted in realistic circumstances and there was very few coincidences which allowed for events to happen without the typical necessary suspension of belief. A vivid, gripping story of hope, long-distance running and how we break the limits of our own endurance, just lung-burstingly good". Partially as a palate cleanser after the megathon that was Dragonbone Chair and partially because I found it quite engaging.

As a woman and a mother, Beth’s POV is very different from Ed’s but she’s an equally flawed character, as all humans are. I knew it wasn’t a book based around a Covid-19 type virus, so I had faith going in that this would be an emotionally charged, survive at all costs books. As a runner for the last 14 years, I looked forward to reading The End of the World Running Club because I was hoping to read about a runner who uses his formidable skills to get to his family and/or save the world. A strong beginning and a very unusual ending that all together make an interesting post-apocalyptic novel.

The argument could be made that the book tries to mitigate against this by having two of the running club be from working class backgrounds, but when filtered through the viewpoint of our middle class narrator, they remain different and other to him. When I read these types of books, the primary questions in my mind are "Ok, how far will these characters go to survive, and what keeps them going? But you’ll also find great passages of running, most of which focused on the mental aspect of running. Look beyond Edgar's selfishness, and just revel in the story itself, as although it's not perfect and I had lots of quibbles with it, this is still a book that I really enjoyed.

But so, a series of events result in Ed being separated from his family, and we learn that evacuation boats are leaving from the southern tip of England with his family on Christmas day — 21 days hence. Der Icherzähler Ed konnte sich allein in ein Haus retten, das kurz davor ist, ins Meer abzurutschen.

She’s reluctant to consider he might have changed and that says more about Beth than it does her husband. I guess this is supposed to endear readers to him, to make us think "Wow, he hates to exercise so much but he's willing to run all those miles to get to his family, he must love them.

It's so sad to me that Walker created a world where so many things could be done and instead there is no depth to these events. Ed and his family were very lucky (no real thanks to Ed) to survive the apocalyptic event that ravaged Edinburgh, Britain, and probably much of the Northern Hemisphere. The main character, Edgar, is a more than a tad lazy, not a terrible man, but on a scale of 1 to 10 his parenting efforts stop at a 6. A good read with plenty of character building and growth, and some varied ways in which people deal with and survive the end of the world/normal society. And when I should have been afraid for our characters and their safety I mostly wanted to cheer for the crazy people they were encountering because then maybe the story would end sooner.Events from this point seem to lurch from one set-piece to another, with dull interludes breaking up the action.

You’ll spend time in ravaged cities with scavengers and in military bases trying to salvage something out of the wreckage.

You’ll spend time trapped in a cellar gasping for air and water and smelling the stink of your own body. When asteroids hit the earth, it takes weeks before he and his family are rescued from their cellar but then they are stuck together in a shelter. Ed and his crew encounter several other survivors, both friends and foes, as they traverse the country. When I wrote On the Lips of Children and The Jade Rabbit, I was trying to depict running a marathon as more than just running, but as a harrowing adventure of endurance and proving your strength for that which you love. Ich las neulich in einer Buchbesprechung, dass jemand den Autoren bereits mit einem Stern dafür belohnt, dass der das Buch schrieb.