Review by Booklist Review
Lark, a 20-year-old gay man, is the only survivor of a harrowing boat journey across the Atlantic, from a future United States overtaken by wildfires and Fundamentalists to the relative freedom of Ireland. But Ireland is dangerous and desolate, with soldiers and trappers haunting the woods. Lark is totally alone, until he meets a beagle named Seamus--a surprise, since all dogs had been destroyed--and the two start the long walk to Glendalough, which Lark's mother described as a thin place. Seamus and the idea of Glendalough are Lark's only tethers to the feeling of wonder his parents instilled in him as a boy on a rural outpost in Maine, and he is mightily tested. House (Southernmost, 2018) has written a postapocalyptic epic that is quiet and lyrical without losing its sense of danger and deprivation, set in a world where the powerful took and took until there was nothing left. But there's not nothing, as Lark reminds us and as Seamus reminds him: "The world had ended. Yet it had not, and as long as there were still cedar trees and dogs, I reckoned I had a reason to keep going." An emotional testament to the power of hope.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this brutal yet hopeful dystopian, House (Southernmost) creates a day-after-tomorrow scenario in which fires have devastated the globe, the U.S. has been taken over by religious extremists called the Fundies, and Ireland has become a place of sanctuary. That's where 20-year-old Lark and his parents are headed in a yacht filled with refugees from North America. But as they near land, they find the border has been closed and are attacked. Lark is the only survivor. He ventures inland--before his mother died in the violence, she said to walk to Glendalough, an old monastic settlement. On the way, he hooks up with a stray dog, Seamus, and a rifle-toting widow, Helen, who is in search of her missing son. The trio gets caught up in a war between the Nays (who are opposed to everything) and the Resistance. They pick up Ronan, the young daughter of a bounty hunter, whose presence only complicates matters for the three. House's dystopia is an overly familiar one, slipstreaming behind Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, though the author fearlessly leans into his dark vision and adds texture with flashbacks to Lark's early years and chapters narrated from Seamus's point of view. The result is a fiercely visceral reading experience. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Lark is just a boy when the world comes to an end. He doesn't remember the before times, but his "after" seems pretty good, growing up in a remote part of Maine with his parents, his friends, and the boy who becomes the love of his life--although their love has been outlawed by the reactionary forces that control this near-future United States. When Lark's idyll is shattered, he and his family make a long, desperate trek to Ireland, where they hope to find refuge. By the time Lark completes that dangerous journey, he's alone and grief-stricken. However, with the help of a good dog and a fighting companion who knows the lay of this new land, he finds a place where he can finally rest. VERDICT The not-too-distant dystopia of House's (Southernmost) latest becomes a vehicle for the author to tell a compelling story about a refugee crisis. Because House takes the story out of a contemporary context, readers can more easily empathize with the novel's refugees rather than focusing on real-world quandaries.--Marlene Harris
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young man heads across the Atlantic, seeking refuge on a rapidly collapsing planet. We meet 20-year-old Lark, the narrator of House's seventh novel, on an overcrowded yacht full of refugees headed from Maine to Ireland. Climate change has sparked devastating fires across America, and aggressive, heavily armed militias enforce a hard-line religious doctrine that makes Lark a target as a gay man. After an arduous trek across the sea that kills many of the passengers, including both of his parents, Lark arrives in Ireland on little more than a rumor that he'll have a safe haven in Glendalough, a spiritually blessed place said to be both progressive and spared the worst of the climate disaster. Along the way he befriends a dog--a rare creature now in this cruel hellscape--and a woman savvy about the landscape and its threats. House delivers this straightforward adventure with efficiency and poignancy, capturing the brief idyll of freedom Lark and his family enjoyed before leaving and the newfound appreciation he has for an environment and liberal society that are both rapidly collapsing. And the novel's style has a clarity and rough-hewn simplicity that bring the story's conflicts into sharp relief. (It's no accident that the dog is named Seamus, a tribute to the Irish Nobel winner Seamus Heaney, the earthiest of great Irish poets.) The novel's chief flaw is its overfamiliarity, to the point of almost feeling like a pastiche of dystopian-novel plots and styles: At various points the story contains echoes of The Dog Stars, I Am Legend, The Road, American War, Station Eleven, and more. House seamlessly works in present-day concerns about rampant fundamentalism and willful ignorance about climate catastrophe, but for anybody well versed in the genre, this will feel like well-trod ground. A cleareyed and engaging, if familiar, apocalyptic yarn. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
