Eine sehr nahe, sehr realistische Zukunft wird also konzipiert, in der unsere Welt, respektive die Menschheit, infolge des Klimawandels nach und nach untergeht. Die Protagonisten in Form einer Klima-Aktivistenfamilie, die Eltern beide aus dem universitären Bereich, haben jahrelang gewarnt, versucht, die Öffentlichkeit mit Vorträgen, Artikeln und Aktionen aufzurütteln, aber nichts wurde unternommen. Chilling and beautifully realised, each small detail taking us towards an unbearable truth. A novel of tender intimacies and vast scope." I kept imagining living by a river, or worse, the sea, and watching the water surge, with nowhere to go but onto land. Imagining it swelling and carrying off everything not cemented to the earth - cars, garbage cans, children's toys, even people and animals.

The High House | Book by Jessie Greengrass | Official The High House | Book by Jessie Greengrass | Official

It is about life during a climate-change induced apocalypse, where floods and superstorms are destroying civilisation, faster than most expected. In short, a group of four people try to survive in their High House, safe on a hill near what was once an English beach. They are well-prepared by an environmentalist who saw disaster coming, but still life is tough, precarious and psychologically almost unbearable. All these characters are well-drawn and some really came to life for me. We made our way across the busy concourse, found the platform, found the train. Found seats. Sat down. I left school for good at lunchtime on the day I turned eighteen. I walked home. The house was empty. I had no plans, either for the afternoon, or for the time beyond it – my life, which stretched empty ahead. Or didn’t. It was becoming clear to everyone, now, that things were getting worse. The winter before, half of Gloucestershire had been flooded, and the waters, refusing to recede, had made a new fen, covering homes and fields, roads and schools. In York, the river had burst its banks and the city centre was gone, walls which had stood for nearly two millennia washed halfway down to Hull. People didn’t say these places were gone. They didn’t say that there were families living in caravans in service stations all along the M5, lined up in the car parks with volunteers running aid stations out of the garage forecourts. People said,I was reminded of many other examples: Imperial (the centuries leading to the Fall of Rome), Geopolitical (the World in the first 14 or so years of the 20th Century), Economical (the Roaring Twenties and later the Great Moderation). A deeply moving novel set in a near-future where a climate crisis is no longer just a possibility but an imminent disaster. Francesca, a scientist, is one of the few to foresee it and has prepared her former holiday home as a sort of ark for herself, her step-daughter Caro, son Pauly and locals Sally and Grandy. This is so grounded in reality and the ordinariness of the lives of this disparate group, that I had to read parts of it through my fingers. We followed the river out toward the sea, first through the outskirts of the town, past the new-built housing estates and the playgrounds, the primary school, the supermarket with its parking lot, the drive-through fast-food restaurant and the petrol station. Pauly walked beside me, holding my hand. The winter before, Pauly had found a bird spotter’s guidebook on the shelves at home, and since then he had spent hours looking at it, making me read out the names of the birds, their identifying features, the descriptions of their eggs—but whereas this information had left my mind, running out of it like water, Pauly had stored it, reproducing details at will. The woman shrugged, barely looking up, and gave me a number, different to the one I had found in the station, but when I called it, although it rang and rang, no one answered.

Ancient High House | Stafford Borough Council The Ancient High House | Stafford Borough Council

I said. We turned the television off and I finished my homework, then went to bed, and when Pauly woke, as he often did, in the small hours of the morning, I let him get in beside me.

by Jessie Greengrass

Periods of drought alternate with months of rain. Tent cities of refugees, driven from their homes by floods, are living in the higher altitudes of Britain. One wonders how long people will be able to live when they do not possess traditional survival skills, and weather patterns destroy crops. People might enjoy warm, sunny days in winter, in places where it used to be cold for months at a time. But there is nothing to enjoy about drought, wildfires, worsening storms, heat waves, and rising waters. I said to father, when he came home from work because the school had called to tell him I had left. To engage further with this topic, consider reading other recent works of climate fiction, like Weather by Jenny Offill and Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins, or nonfiction, like The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells or Move by Parag Khanna.

The High House by Jessie Greengrass | Waterstones The High House by Jessie Greengrass | Waterstones

It is beautifully, beautifully written. I only highlighted the four passages, but there were plenty of others I could have chosen from. (I didn’t, because a lot of them already were highlighted and it makes me feel so lame to just copy over the stuff that’s already been highlighted.) When the artist left, a group of students from a nearby agricultural college moved in, and Francesca let them pay a nominal rent in exchange for renovating the garden. This reading group guide for The High House includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. Now shortlisted for the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and 2022 RSL Encore Prize for Second Novels (having previously been shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Novel Prize and

Table of Contents

I poured coffee from the pot, one for each of us, and one for Francesca, who came downstairs in her dressing gown, her eyes puffy and face creased, saying, We know from the start what has happened and then are being told how it happened from the different perspectives of our three protagonists. This structure works really well for dramatic effect. Built in around 1595 for the wealthy Dorrington family, the ornate timber framed building is reputed to be the largest surviving timber framed town house in England from the Tudor period.

The High House by Jessie Greengrass | Goodreads

As scientists we are used to remaining in one place. We tell ourselves that it is our job only to present the evidence—but such neutrality has become a fantasy. The time for it is past. In this gripping and beautifully written climate change-disaster story of four people living in a refuge, the High House. Planned and provisioned over years by Francesca, a climate scientist and activist, for her stepdaughter Caroline “Caro”, and son Paul “Pauly”, and a caretaker and his granddaughter, Sally. The four spend years together, while the seas flood much of the world, leaving them on an island and growing ever more isolated.An intimate, elegiac drama of a not-quite family finding a way to be together. Greengrass steeps us deeply in her wild, watery setting ... its prophetic vision fixes the attention." The whole complicated system of modernity that had held us up, away from the earth, was crumbling, and we were becoming again what we had used to be: cold, and frightened of the weather, and frightened of the dark. The village is just along the coast from a once thriving port town whose demise occurred both in a single event centuries before – a storm which washed away both the spit which protected its natural harbour and permanently moved the river mouth around which it was based – and then over many years as the town was subject to coastal erosion. To learn more about how the house was built the Castle Room has an interesting display showing and explaining the method of construction and the materials used - our visitors young and old find this room fascinating!