The Last Day

Andrew Hunter Murray

Penguin Random House

Otago Daily Times, February 22nd 2020

In 2012, Karen Thompson Walker published The Age of Miracles, a beautiful exploration of the physical, social and psychological effects of a slowing in the Earth’s rotation as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl. QI elf and podcaster Andrew Hunter Murray’s debut novel describes life at the end of such a process: a tidally locked world that completes a single rotation per year, leaving one face in eternal light, the other in never-ending darkness (if the planet stopped turning completely, day and night would each last 6 months, as the narrator helpfully points out).

The ‘winner’ of this game of planetary roulette is Britain, bathed in midmorning sunlight that is bright enough to sustain life without burning or freezing, and one of the last habitable places on Earth. Thanks to the swift and decisive actions of a government that moved quickly to repel the floods of climate refugees and seize control of the fertile lands of Scotland and Western Europe, the country has regained its position as a global superpower, her position maintained through martial law and the country’s borders protected by a submarine border of scuttled ships, floating defences and landmines that repel the most determined refugees. Overseeing it all is Prime Minister Davenport, whose willingness to stop at nothing to protect the new British Empire has seen him rule unchallenged for 26 years.

Having lived through the Stop and losing her parents to the social and environmental collapse that followed, the story’s central character, Ellen Hopper, has faith in neither Davenport nor the future and would happily spend whatever time remains in isolation in the North Sea, studying the impact of the orbital slowdown on ocean currents. So when a pair of officials arrive to escort her to the deathbed of her former mentor, Edward Thorne, she ignores their summons until they make it clear that refusal is not an option. Ellen has long wondered whether Thorne, Davenport’s former right-hand-man, might be privy to knowledge the Prime Minister would prefer to keep secret, and when his cryptic final words confirm her suspicions, she sets out to discover the truth, pursued by government forces and risking not just her own life but those of all that help her.

The story’s premise is interesting, and the writing is competent, if unremarkable. The global slowdown is most obviously read as a metaphor for climate change but could stand for any number of contemporary existential threats, from pandemic flu to nuclear war, and the political response is an extrapolation of the nationalist exceptionalist tendencies that have delivered everything from Trump to Brexit. All in all, it is a depressingly plausible reminder (as if we needed it) of the ease with which politicians can justify acts of atrocity in the name of national interest, although not without amusing touches along the way, my favourite being the vision of Britain as permanently out to morning tea.

My biggest problem with some of Hunter Murray’s other authorial choices. That Ellen acts despite believing the world is doomed is presumably intended as a testament to humanity’s tenacity and altruistic spirit. Still, I’m not convinced Thorne’s secret, when finally revealed, would really change anything. And whilst I have no problem with men writing from a woman’s point of view per se, there is nothing about Ellen’s thoughts or actions that are identifiably different from that of Allen. I am assuming his use of a female protagonist is intended to be gender neutral rather than a helpful stereotype through which remaining childless becomes a psycho-sociological expression of hopelessness (and, to be fair, her ex-husband eventually makes the same decision), but the lack of any discernable female perspective renders her character less than three dimensional.

The Last Day is worth reading for its evocation of the global zeitgeist, but if you want a truly nuanced examination of a global catastrophe in slow motion, The Age of Miracles would be a fitting accompaniment.