From the author of the number-one international bestseller The History of Bees, a captivating story of the power of nature and the human spirit that explores the threat of a devastating worldwide drought, witnessed through the lives of a father, a daughter, and a woman who will risk her life to save the future.In 2019, seventy-year-old Signe sets sail alone on a hazardous voyage across the ocean … a hazardous voyage across the ocean in a sailboat. On board, a cargo that can change lives. Signe is haunted by memories of the love of her life, whom she’ll meet again soon.
In 2041, David and his young daughter, Lou, flee from a drought-stricken Southern Europe that has been ravaged by thirst and war. Separated from the rest of their family and desperate to find them, they discover an ancient sailboat in a dried-out garden, miles away from the nearest shore. Signe’s sailboat.
As David and Lou discover Signe’s personal effects, her long ago journey becomes inexorably linked to their own.
An evocative tale of the search for love and connection, The End of the Ocean is a profoundly moving father daughter story of survival and a clarion call for climate action.
Translated from the Norwegian by Diane Oatley
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I love a book that may not end happily but at least characters have a chance at redemption. This book fit the bill perfectly.
Haunting, yet hopeful, this dystopian story is best read with a tall, cool glass of precious water close at hand. The translation is filled with beautiful and moving prose and the story, told in two time periods, is filled with remarkably-drawn characters.
A good depiction of what may happen in the not so far future.
They were childhood friends who become lovers.
He wanted a comfortable life.
She wanted to save the world.
Would their love survive?
The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde is a compelling dystopian novel and a warning. It is also a heartbreaking story of lovers torn asunder by social forces.
The exotic pristine beauty of Norway is the symbol of the beauty and perfection of the world–which humankind is willing to sacrifice to continue an unsustainable lifestyle.
Signe’s mother was willing to destroy their Norweigan habitat so the community could progress and thrive by the diversion of the river into a power plant. Her family hotel needed this to survive.
Signe’s father protested the loss of the water ouzel, a tiny mollusk that cleaned the water and lived 100 years, and the natural beauty of the River Breio and its waterfall. He and Magnus’s father tried to stop the plan. They failed.
At university, Signe and Magnus become lovers and seem to be following in their father’s footsteps in protecting the environment. But Magnus opts instead for the status quo–a good life–working for Signe’s mother. Signe leaves him.
Years later Signe learns that Magnus is harvesting the glaciers and selling the ice. It is time for one more act of resistance.
The legacy of their actions will impact future climate refugees David and Lou. In 2041, France is burning and the family flees. In the turmoil, David and his daughter Lou are separated from his wife Anne and their infant son. They travel to a refugee camp, at first an oasis of order providing basic needs. Later, things tumble into chaos.
This grim warning on the natural outcome of climate change also offers hope in the healing forgiveness of love.
I received a free ARC from the publisher through Bookish First in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
This was the first time I am reading this author Maja Lunde’s work, and what a wonderful experience this was. This novel END OF THE OCEAN has a powerful message that will resonate with readers. Told in two distinct timelines, that will eventually become woven seamlessly and that is Lunde’s artistic and creative talent.
In 2017 we meet an activist Signe from Norway and a citizen of the world who travels with her boat Blue. She discovers that the ancient glaciers from her hometown was being mined to be sent to the wealthy in the middle east. In 2041, David and Lou try to flee the drought in Southern France. The book was told in alternating point of views in two time frames, which helps move the story forward in a great pace. The writing was just superb and Lunde delivered a story that was both heart wrenching, beautiful and poetic as she addressed important themes in this book – climate change and activism both of which were very important and timely topics.
Lunde is an author to watch. Her talent in story telling is compelling and poignant. Once you start you will not want to put this book down. The story will grab and immerse you into these characters’ lives and backstory. I highly recommend this read for a masterful literary achievement.
If we somehow manage to save the planet from ourselves, it will be because of big-hearted beautiful books like this one, that make us feel the devastating cost of our current climate inaction. Not just the planet-wide consequences, but the human-scale ones as well. Gripping and powerful.
Lyrical, atmospheric, and eerily prescient, The End of the Ocean is my favorite kind of speculative fiction. Lunde expertly weaves together both a warning and a gorgeous literary work of love and survival that will leave you wishing for rain.
I received a free electronic ARC copy of this novel on October 5, 2019, from Netgalley, Maja Lunde, and Scribner UK. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I am pleased to recommend The End of the Ocean to friends and family. This is a novel that speaks well for the hearts call of family and the importance of cleaning up our act on our earth. It is a story for our time, and that to come. Let it not be a prophecy.
The End of the Ocean is set out in two timelines, two distinct stories that eventually intertwine. This is handled most effectively – seamlessly – by Maja Lunde.
We have the story of Singe Hauger, born and raised in Ringfjorden, Sogn og Fjordane, Norway but a citizen of the world, a journalist, author, and professional activist. One of the few of her generation to leave their small village in Norway, Singe has lived in the wider world these last 50 years. In 2019 at 70 years old, she crosses the wide ocean to return home in her boat. Blue was an 18th-year birthday gift from her mother, though they shared little else physically or emotionally. Blue was, for Singe, a perfect match. Together they have traveled the world, touching nature all around. Blue is both sail and diesel, small enough for her to handle on her own, big enough for her to live comfortably aboard, making a very small footprint on the earth. Blue has allowed Singe the mobility necessary to fight her battles with the polluters of this world.
Singe had returned home occasionally. For the funerals of first her mother, then her father, to clean up after their deaths and grieve them properly. Now she is seeking closure with the love of her life. Magnus is at the heart of this desecration of her Norway. Advocating for the earth and its critters are her vocation, her life, her heart song. There is no way to work past this defilement of the earth. This is the ultimate betrayal.
For the news from home is crushing – Those in power have sold Blafonna, the iceberg on the mountain, ice being harvested and shipped to the wealthy southern European nations firmly in the grip of the drought – so they might have ice in their cocktails. And the community has plans to harness the River Breio – trap the flow on the mountain and send it by pipeline, bypassing the River, and the Sisters, famous local waterfalls. They need to control the flow to power a massive generator and create electricity enough for the mining of aluminum ore on the mountain. Aluminum necessary only for the seemingly eternal war in the Middle East. It will be the death of the villages on that river, Eidesdalen, and Ringfjorden. Fed by the mountain rains and the slowly melting glacier composed of ice a thousand years old, the River Breio, Lake Eide and Sister Falls are the heart of Norway and home. There may be one more battle of environmental advocacy left in the old girl.
And we view life in 2041 through the eyes of David, who with his 6-year-old daughter Lou is a refugee in search of a home – and the other half of his family, wife Anna and young son August who due to circumstance did not leave Argeles, France with David and Lou. The world drought has Europe firmly in its clutches, and as David and Lou move from one refugee camp to another seeking the rest of their family and a country willing to take them in, they see the system of refuge breaking down in camp after camp, leaving these footsore travelers without water or medicine or food, and the camps themselves becoming armed headquarters for the lawless. Even the Red Cross has given up control of the refugee camps.
And then David and Lou find Singe’s boat Blue, carefully wrapped against the weather, and waiting. But where will they go from here? How do you run from an endless worldwide drought? Where do you run when the world implodes around you? Where can you go, in a world without potable water?
In 2017, 70 year-old Signe returns to her home – the village of Ringfjorden, Norway. She has come with her life-long partner, her sailboat Blue, to avenge the glacier and the waterfalls of her home on the edge of the fjord. Signe became an environmentalist at an early age by the influence of her father, and she carried this with her throughout her life by fighting against the folly of human progress. Now she plans to make her final stand carrying the precious ice being harvested from the mountains of Norway to the most guilty man in her eyes, Magnus, her first love.
In 2041, David, a young man, and his daughter Lou are refugees of the water crisis in western Europe. They have fled to Bordeaux after their home was consumed in a terrible fire in hopes of finding his wife, Anna, and infant son, August, from whom they were separated. David struggles to put on a brave face for his daughter as the supplies at the refugee camp begin to dwindle. The one thing that keeps the two of them afloat in the horrible heat and drought is the abandoned boat they discovered nearby, with personal effects from Norway on board.
Maja Lunde is a Norwegian novelist and screenwriter, and The End of the Ocean is her second novel for adults following The History of Bees. This story is at an intersection of fiction where futurism, drama, and environmentalism meet. It is a story of family and connection while also being a call to climate change action by painting a very bleak future for us.