The End of Nightwork

Product Information

The second is that NOTHING GOES WRONG, not even a single major hiccup. Everything came together TOO seamlessly. I felt in suspense, but then nothing even happened. This is a distinctive novel, combining chronic illness, family, philosophical thought, and what gives people meaning. The story itself, narrated by Pol to his child, focuses on Pol's life and the tensions in his marriage due to his condition and general relation to the world, in terms of thought and action. There's a theme running underneath about Pol's relation to knowledge-making as someone who is trying to write non-fiction without a university degree and who is seen as someone who knows everything whilst being self-taught. There's also a notable generational element to the book, not only in the obvious youth movement, but also relationships between parents and children and the perceptions of Pol when he appears to be different ages to what he really is.

I just wish there was more of this, and less "dropped", random details that are supposed to help brush a picture of who the characters are, but end up like reference dropping. For example, all the music bands Caroline loves didn't help me understand her as a person. So I wish that what felt expandable in the story had been replaced by more details about mythology, philosophy, and more existential ponderings diving into the main character's condition. Perhaps as a way of coming to terms with this, he looks for meaning in the past. An earnest autodidact, the adult Pol begins to research a book about Bartholomew Playfere, a fictional 17th-century tub-preacher who predicted ecological cataclysm. According to Playfere’s pamphlet The End of Nightwork and the Sundering of the Curtain in Twayn, the end of the world will begin not in the Holy Land but on an island off the coast of Connemara. Pol is so inspired he chooses the island as his honeymoon destination. He also feels a strange kinship when he discovers there are gaps in the prophet’s history: “His life story seemed to leap from his childhood to … his ill-advised pilgrimage to the island where he and his followers lived out the rest of their lives awaiting the coming apocalypse.” Interesting novel about a rare aging illness, marriage, age, a 17th century prophet, and conspiracy theorists. It was more modern that I had expected from the description and the cover and there were some great ideas, but I don’t think I got all of it. The first half confused me a bit; the dialogue didn’t always sound logical to me, which made it hard to really understand the characters and their motives. In the end, this was interesting and sad. And while having a reputation among his friends and family as an autodidact, Pol seems something of a drifter in life – never really following through on his research to turn it into something meaningful and working casually as a gardener at a London school where his wife Caroline teaches.I had convinced myself that this was historical fiction when it’s not. Oops. I’m actually way less interested in it as a contemporary story. The End of Nightwork takes the form of a memoir written by Pol for his young son, Jesse. Pol describes the difficult marriage between his German father and Irish mother and his obsession with 17th-century apocalyptic prophet Bartholomew Playfere. After Pol discovers Playfere through a lesson at school and a Ladybird book, he learns that his parents honeymooned on the same island in Connemara where Playfere led his people to wait for Armageddon (Playfere had identified it as the location due to a misunderstanding). At some point he gets a job as a tutor for the adopted daughter of two friends �� a disabled artist and social activist Cynthia who becomes involved in the Kourist movement which has grown on Reditt It's an odd conspiracy theory that seems to owe more to Pizzagate and Q-Anon and, in the UK, the fantasies of Carl Beech and the ill-fated Operation Midland, than, say, to Climate XR, but with obvious links to Pol's own condition, mentally still young but, by the novel's end, elderly, and labelled by Kourist's as a 'Hoarist'. Nightwork" follows Harry Booth who at age 9 starts stealing to support his mother who is undergoing chemotherapy treatments. When his mother eventually dies, Harry still keeps stealing and breaking into homes hence the title of this book. Harry eventually meets a woman called Miranda and starts to think about a different future, but is threatened by someone who wants to use his skills.

Roberts develops her characters beautifully and the story really is in the intricate details. While it seems to start slowly, the build-up and the ending make it worth the wait! Awesome twist. This book might be totally far-fetched and unrealistic… but it’s fiction. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and do read this book.This book featured in the 2023 version of the influential annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (past years have included Natasha Brown, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Douglas Stuart, Sally Rooney, Rebecca Watson, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, JR Thorp Bonnie Garmus, Gail Honeyman among many others). For me, the sign of an awesome author is one who changes the tide of the story with such subtlety that you do not even realize it is happening.

At the end of his prophetic journey through hell, purgatory and heaven, Dante has a vision of a book. Standing in the presence of God, he sees “bound up with love together in one volume, what through the universe in leaves is scattered”. Here is a basic taxonomy then: God is a novelist. Human beings are His characters. Prophets are the readers. Pol escapes his weird family when he meets Caroline, a “debonair” violinist. The attraction is instant and mutual and the couple marry in their early twenties. By then, Pol is researching Bartholomew Playfere, a fictional 17th-century Puritan who prophesised ecological disaster. The couple spend their honeymoon on the small Irish island which Playfere said would be the only place where you could survive the apocalypse.

Advance Praise

At the climax of this story, a misanthropic and judgmental Tennessean grandmother pleads with an antinomian serial killer – the Misfit – for her life. She appeals to his sense of decency but the Misfit is concerned with a higher form of goodness than charity, and a lower form of evil than murder. With her last breath the grandmother blesses the Misfit unawares: “You’re one of my babies,” she says. “You’re one of my own children.” After the grandmother’s death, he muses that “she would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” O’Connor described the Misfit as a “prophet gone wrong”. For just one divine minute, through communion with the Misfit, the grandmother is transported out of her homespun hypocrisy and into a universe of grace. I enjoyed this story, quite a bit, as it meandered through Harry’s life from childhood through his adult maturation. His travels took me from coast to coast in the US, to Europe and other continents. I was never bored because he was interesting and, if I’m honest, I’m a die-hard fan of Roberts’ storytelling style. While this is categorized as romantic suspense, it reads more like contemporary fiction with romantic and suspense elements. It’s my only criticism, though I’m happy regardless of the label. 4.5 stars That and Pol's obsessive interest in the writings of an obscure seventeenth-century Puritan prophet, Bartholomew Playfere, and his premonitions of ecological disaster and the end of the world. But while Pol is failing to complete his research on Playfere, he encounters a radical new movement that argues that all economic and political events are part of an aeon-long struggle between the old and the young - that the 'hoarist' habit of violence, their need to conquer, has also affected how they treat the planet.

And yes, a little far-fetched and unbelievable. But I read for that. That amazing feeling and that bit of fancy.Roberts really is an accomplished story-teller, making this very readable, with characters who endear themselves to the reader and repay the investment of time and emotion. And this story has everything a reader could want: food, theatre, theft, love and romance, and a clever sting to turn the tables on a ruthless collector. Enjoyable, entertaining and hard to put down. But while Pol is failing to complete his research on Playfere, he encounters a radical new movement that argues that all economic and political events are part of an aeon-long struggle between the old and the young - that the 'hoarist' habit of violence, their need to conquer, has also affected how they treat the planet. The leader of this popular movement predicts an imminent inter-generational conflict - father against son, mother against daughter - that echoes Playfere's own prophecies. Caroline encourages Pol because she is in awe of his intellect and thinks he is going to become “a literary sensation” by writing a book about Playfere. Instead, Pol amasses endless notes and becomes distracted by bringing They're happy enough, even if having a young child has put something of a strain on their marriage. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’