ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD, good iteration of my delight the "Now what?" post-apocalyptic tale

ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD
EIREN CAFFALL
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 Kindle edition, available now

One of Ancillary Review of Books' 2025 Notable Books!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most—love and work, community and knowledge—will survive.

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My Review: I really liked Station Eleven a lot. I'm a sucker for this story: After the Fall, now what? Maybe proof of this enduring fascination is my championing of Earth Abides (now a TV show) and Day of the Triffids. The genre presents a long tail of goodwill, then, as well as wide scope for action set in the present. This story is split between the present crisis...being flooded out of their home on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History...and how things came to be so terrible that this is where their home needs to be.

A really good story idea, one that has a lot of genuine and affecting emotional resonance; then uses up its narrative momentum by structuring the past as flashbacks. Once or twice, okay; more than that it becomes a real drag. Start the story in the past. Trust the reader to invest in the characters, and rip our lungs out by showing us in real time what's happening. It felt to me the author was cushioning the blow by using this method of storytelling.

So no fifth star from me.

Four stars were assured when this happened:

“Hell, it was happening, I saw it happening. But I couldn’t picture it, you know? I couldn’t picture how we’d lose the seasons, how it would be tropical heat in November, but still have blizzards that melted into heat waves. I couldn’t picture the way the storms come and then come back. Not the polar cold fronts in the south. Not the new hurricanes, the hot winters, the king tides, the typhoons going east then west then east again. It should have been easy to see. It was in the data.”

This is exactly and precisely how I've been feeling about others' apparent inability to retain the thread between the past climate events and their all-but-certain genesis. My problem is that I *can* picture it and am cursed with seeing it before my appalled eyes...it's like, in the space of thirty-nine years, I've moved from New York to Maryland. Without moving an inch.

I won't live long enough (I hope) to see this novel's world in the flesh. I expect that, if I'm cursed to do so, it will look a lot like this. It was Author Caffall's gift to me to make me a lot gladder that I'm really old and fairly infirm.

The reason I hope you'll read it, though, is that its sisters Nonie and Bix are the kind of kids we should all strive to raise. They are resilient, they are resourceful, they are respectful of the limited resources they can command and mindful of their good fortune, they are angry enough to work for more and humble enough to know what "enough" means.

They made the issues I had with the structure into cavils. Had I not had them to invest my emotional energy into, I would've enjoyed the story a lot less. As it is, I do recommend it, and hope you'll take this as your nudge to see what a wounded planet will do to heal itself.

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD, supernatural novel set in wintry, beautiful Norway

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD
CHELSEA IVERSEN
Sourcebooks Landmark
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Rage burns brighter than any spellfire...Deep in the birchwoods of Norway, magic courses through the veins of two sisters. For years they've been alone, but sweet-tempered Kaija is tired of living in shadows and longs for a life filled with community, even if it means stifling her magic. But Minna is a witch through and through, with wrath always simmering just below the surface.

Different as they may be, both will never forget the day they were driven from their village. The day their mother burned. When Kaija leaves to pursue a new life, Minna is left alone in the darkness of the forest.

Devastated and outraged at the betrayal, Minna casts a curse to punish those who took everything from her. What she doesn't realize is that this act will incite a deadly chain of events. Soon it will destroy everything, including the life Kaija has lovingly built. But once a witch's rage boils, regret means nothing—she can't take back what's already done.

Someone will have to burn.

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My Review: The nicest surprise of Deathtober's reading. I hadn't read anything by Author Iversen before this, and was expecting a more horror-tinged read...what I got was a revenge story, featuring sisters whose lives were upended by small-minded christian hatemongers. There is definitely a supernatural element to the story. It isn't, however, the kind of all-in horror that ends up with your psyche splattered in gore.

A big part of the reason for that is this is a story that unspools slowly, and in a very interior way. It is almost a récit à deux, a double recit, though such a beast doesn't exist (that I know of). Minna is angry, bitter, and filled with the inexhaustable fuel of contempt for those not as smart as she is. Kaija, on the other hand, is genuinely kind if extremely Other by virtue of who she is and whom she knows best. She is the sister whose path is always set by her desire to see, and be, the best it's possible to, in herself and others. Her decision to return to their home village where their mother was burned alive as a witch causes Minna to react violently She casts a curse on the whole village. Her rage can never be extinguished, but can be thrust outward to burn others.

The reason the book appealed to me is probably the reason some found it frustrating. I liked the slower pace that the author chose, as it left more time for me to get to feel the sisters' differences of character. The third-person narration, told in short chapters alternating between the sisters, was spangled with lovely sentences that use Norwegian terms, that unfold into images of the birch woods and the village, in three mental dimensions. Shadows and light are lovely almost characters.

The Norse "pagan" craft is wonderfully used, with figures from the Norse mythos making their presences known without coming across as intrusions into Reality by pagan gods...they feel like characters whose names we happen to know. The worldbuilding is thus made that much more enjoyable for a twenty-first century atheist. The way that Kaija, the elder sister, yearns for life in the village as a christian wife and a mother did not sit well with me...selling herself short and out to be average, when she could be a Power? Not the kind of message I'd choose to send. But Minna's rageful reponse to her sister's absconding, while understandable, skates perilously close to Evil. The author was very wise to be sure we know that Minna's curse is not the cause of Kaija's different life challenges. That made what could've been unpleasant horror into not-entirely-pleasant, deeply thought through, supernatural fiction.

Set at the crossroads where Norway had to choose between its old, established supernatural beliefs and the newfangled ways of the christian church in a lasting, final way, this story of sisters whose choices define the stakes, and the costs, of each course is one I think is ideal for anyone on your Yule list who loves immersive reads. Investing the time to be in this world with Kaija and Minna is easiest to make happen now that the nights are long and the winds are cold. It was a pleasure to meet Author Iversen. I would commend Minna, and Kaija (though less so), to your long nights of deep reading.