THE END OF THE WORLD BOOK: a novel
This is no ordinary novel. An encyclopedia of memory—from A to Z—The End of the World Book deftly intertwines fiction, memoir, and cultural history, reimagining the story of the world and one man’s life as they both hurtle toward a frightening future. Alistair McCartney’s alphabetical guide to the apocalypse layers images like a prose poem, building from Aristotle to da Vinci, hip-hop to lederhosen, plagues to zippers, while barreling from antiquity to the present.
In this profound book about mortality, McCartney composes an irreverent archive of philosophical obsessions and homoerotic fixations, demonstrating the difficulty of separating what is real from what is imagined.
If I've read a more deeply impressive, beautiful, sweeping, mindful, and innovative first novel than Alistair McCartney's The End of the World Book, I have no memory of it. McCartney is a writer of peerless, brilliant originality and pure, giant talent.
Dennis Cooper
THE WEAKLINGS BLOG
Beguiling, comical, earnest, and wise beyond its author's years. Crossing sporadic bursts of linear narrative with a detailed taxonomy of altercation, McCartney has engineered a compelling compendium of integrated distractions, somewhat in the manner of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Read it from A to Z. He knows who you are: you will be quizzed.
James McCourt
AUTHOR OF QUEER STREET
The End of the World Book is in turn informative, playful, erotic, imaginary, witty, perverse, charming, autobiographical, and full of wonders; the letter K, for example, begins with Kafka and ends with Freddie Krueger. If the world is ending soon, I recommend you read it while there's still time.
Jim Krusoe
AUTHOR OF ICELAND AND GIRL FACTORY