Ewan Morrison (2021) How to survive everything when there’s no on left to trust.

I hadn’t heard of Scottish novelist Ewan Morrison, which is perhaps unusual because I read lots and he’s won lots of awards. And I kinda pride myself on knowing the Scottish literary scene. He’s a great writer. But this book almost failed the ten-page test.

Beginnings.

My Survival Guide.

‘I’m still alive, and if you’re reading this that means you’re all alive too.

That’s something.

My name is Haley Cooper Crows and I’m in lockdown in a remote location. I can’t tell you about because if I do then you and any people you come in contact with could endanger me…

When this shit began I was fifteen years old…’

A coming-of-age novel with a wired-up teenage girl as narrator.  Catcher in the Rye springs to mind. The world is always ending but they’ve got it under control if they can just hang on long enough. Adults are too weird and phony to be taken seriously.

Ed, Haley’s dad has apocalypse issues. The end of the world is around the next corner, or has already happened and we don’t even know it. But he’s wrote a manual. With a willing band of followers, they have prepared for the end of times. Lockdown means razor wire, rifles, crossbows and lines that will not be crossed or else. Off grid. Near Loch Etie, Scotland.

That’s normal for Haley. Ben, her younger brother has ADHD, he’s on the spectrum. Dad’s how-to guide and endless lists of the last things they need when everything goes to shit is responsible parenting. An apocalyptic scout manual for being prepped and prepared.

Hayley’s mum, Justin is always prepared. She wants to know exactly where her kids are and when they’re coming back. She’s quite prepared to have her ex-husband committed again. The law is on her side. She knows a paranoid psychotic loser when she sees one. After all, she married him.

Hayley is willing to take the middle ground as long as her mum buys her a new iPhone.

But what if…Ed is actually right? A virus, much like Covid-19, but much more destructive, has spread. People are dying in their billions. Civilisation is unspun as the military takes control of the limited supplies of food. Those that resist are in the firing line.

Faith = purpose.

Ed predicted all this. To his followers he’s their messiah. They understand why he kidnapped his kids. He loves them and doesn’t want them to perish—outside.

Halley thinks it’s too stupid to be real. All her friends are zombies. But then she begins to realise, she might have been one too, with her endless running after the next big thing—and they weren’t really her friends either.

Her wee brother is more easily diverted and converted. She’s not sure about being unsure. Like Holden Caulfield, the unreliable narrator. Hayley’s dad’s stupid inventions seem to work fine in their own stupid way. And there’s Danny, a seventeen-year old boy.  Meg, his hippy-shit big mamma, with enormous tits. She calls her ‘love’ and mothers them all.

‘My dad taught us to be prepared for whatever was coming. He said we should know the facts about how long we could survive without food, water or fresh air, and to remember that we couldn’t live at all without hope… It was better, he said, to be ten years too early than one minute too late.’

If you’re not part of the solution then you’re part of the problem. Hayley wants to be real, but she can no longer be sure what is and is not. She’s writing it out—to be sure—and lets you decide. Read on.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CVBVVGD6