The Stranding- Kate Sawyer

This is simply one of the best books I have read this year. It was not what I expected but I absolutely loved it.

‘𝗗𝗶𝗱 𝘀𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗵𝗶𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗲?’

We meet Ruth and Nik, two strangers stranded on a beach in new Zealand, with nothing and no-one except a beached whale, which dies in front of them. There has been a global apocalyptic event that has annihilated Europe with destruction on a scale never witnessed before. They manage to survive with the whale as their protector and so begins their story of strength, survival, grief and love. It is written from two timelines Before and After. We turn back to Ruth’s life Before and the choices she made that led her to NZ and her survival contrasting with the After and how they build a relationship and survive.

‘𝗔 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲, 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲, 𝗮𝘀 𝗶𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆.’

This story is just so vivid and spellbinding. In the beginning of the After I felt as raw, confused and sad as Ruth. I could feel the white noise in my ears as I was reading, in the aftermath of the end of the world all white, burnt and radioactive. It was quite frightening and thought provoking. I thought the use of the Whale as their protector was genius - a large, imposing, gentle creature and symbolic of the dying world. Using this animal was very poignant to how we are treating our planet now and was a klaxon sounding as I read.

‘𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.’

The contrast between Before and After is striking and has a cut glass clarity to it which I loved. It really showed how ‘head in the sand’ people can be and that all our choices have consequences. It was difficult to read the Before alongside, as although we are aware of the After, it still created a panicky sense for me to find out how we got to there.

I loved the characters and how they developed over time. Ruth grew into herself, quite selfish at the beginning, angry yet fragile. But became a very strong woman, I think initially surprised at her own capabilities, I really felt quite connected to her. I felt like I settled into a gentle rhythm reading this, living with them as they build a new life, the simplicity of living, shelter, food, birth - the natural cycle really spoke to me. A return to original people, hunting and gathering, the innate instinct to survive and the joy of oral storytelling - this I really loved, sharing joyful moments and what it is to be human.

This was an entrancing story, showing the real fragility of our planet but the strength that can be found in the darkness moments. A powerful tale of love, loss and survival. An absolute must read!

✩✩✩✩✩

The Stranding is an end of days/ apocalyptic novel with a difference. Instead of focusing on the wider political events that lead up to something this cataclysmic happening, the book unfolds around one person, Ruth.

Ruth is actively distancing herself from the impending doom constantly being portrayed in the media. She shuts it out and focuses on her relationship with Alex, friendship with Fran and work as a primary school teacher but she’s also increasingly aware that she just isn’t quite happy, it’s not enough and there is something missing in her otherwise satisfactory life.

Ruth is accused of running away from problems but this time she is certain that she’s actually running towards something. What Ruth doesn’t realise is that she is actually running towards hope, freedom, new chances and love.

There are two very brilliantly and cleverly intertwined narratives with subtle but meaningfully placed juxtapositions. Ruth’s life ‘before’ and what leads her to travel to a beach in New Zealand discovering a beached whale, and Ruth’s survival ‘after’ where she has met Nik, a photographer on the beach whose lives are suddenly forced together when they use the beached whale as a way to survive.

I loved the writing style and character development of Ruth. How the chapters flip between ‘before’ and ‘after’ kept a good level of pace to the storyline and allowed the reader to follow both of Ruth’s major life journeys simultaneously. I found myself enjoying the ‘after’ chapters more but needing the ‘before’ chapters for context. I also enjoyed the way in which nature and its ability to find a way came through as a theme.

This book was so different from what I expected. It was well written and I enjoyed reading Ruth's story. We get Ruth's life before and after she hides inside the whale. I thought about this story for quite some time after I'd finished reading it and on what life truly means.

I could not put this down. The Stranding is the story of Ruth told through flashbacks to her past where she is living in London, as a primary school teacher in a relationship born out of an extra marital affair, and her life in the present where she is living in a post apocalyptic New Zealand. I had seen so many amazing reviews of this before I read it and it completely lives up to all of those reviews. I may have swerved this, given the premise, in the fear that it would be depressing but it never is. The story never gets bogged down in the details of what happens to create the disaster that wipes out most of the population and there are no pressing feelings of impending doom when you read about Kate’s earlier life in London - instead amazingly this story is almost poetic and hopeful and asks you to examine what you really need in order to live a fulfilling and contented life. A brilliant read that will stay with me!

Well this book was nothing like I expected . One half is a contemporary story about a modern woman and her relationships and the other half is dystopian! The Stranding is one of the most unique books I have ever read and I urge you to read it! It follows Ruth , her life before and her life after she hides in a whale to avoid global catastrophe. It’s a very thought provoking tale and I think this story will stay with me for a long time

This was okay….without spoilers, I thought it all a bit far fetched. It felt quite disjointed to me as well, the story didn’t flow, and I just didn’t connect with it.

It’s was ok.


As ever, my thanks to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the advance copy

The Stranding by Kate Sawyer, is a story about Ruth Before and Ruth Now; the Before being in our time and the Now being in a dystopian future that has been created by mankind destructing itself. I wasn't a fan of the younger Ruth but the older one is impressive. With 2 times lines that eventually meet, we come to understand how Ruth travelled from London to New Zealand and climbed into a whale's mouth. I enjoyed this book, although I found some of the vagueness of events and the ending a bit dissatisfying. A touching dystopian read and actually quite realistic.

Ruth is at a loose end. Riddled with nagging doubts about her life choices and eager to bury her head in the sand as news reports become ever more troubling, she decides to reinvent herself and head off to New Zealand. But the disaster that the news has been heralding catches up with her, an apocalyptic event which she survives by pure chance changing her life and world forever.

With one fellow survivor – friendly Kiwi Nik – Ruth sees out the end of the world by sheltering inside the mouth of a dead beached whale. This might sound like it’s straying into magical realism, and although Sawyer isn’t forthcoming with any science as to the technicalities here – we only know what Ruth and Nik know – it’s more grounded and practical feeling than it is whimsical. Likewise, whatever the apocalyptic event itself actually is, we don’t need to know the exact specifics. It’s some sort of nuclear firestorm caused by escalating tensions of some description, but it’s really just a narrative switch which, when thrown, alters Ruth’s life utterly.

The scenes we see of her life before the apocalypse are starkly contrasting with everything we see after the bombs(?) have dropped; so much of her life she takes for granted, as indeed we all do, and that’s made ever more clear as we flit between the two timelines. Her and Nik are scavenging for food across a ravaged and desolate North Island in one chapter, and in another she’s having a jolly family Christmas dinner. You might think that the juxtaposition of Ruth’s pre-apocalyptic life alongside her post-apocalyptic one might be jarring, or that perhaps one might not be as satisfying as the other, but actually the glorious mundanity of her former life frames her new one with a great deal of poignancy. It’s almost as if Sally Rooney decided to write a version of The Road.

Ruth’s world before the apocalypse struck was one of teaching kids and not really being sure if she wanted her own, before being landed with someone else’s. A life with loving parents and a best friend – the instantly loveable Fran – who drives the two of them back home for Christmas. A life with messy, tangled relationships, social obligations and so on. In short, it was fairly run of the mill. But the effort that has been expended in making it all feel utterly believable and real shines through; as soon as characters are introduced, you feel as if you know them, and through knowing them, as if you know more of Ruth too. The decisions that she makes along the way to making the most significant one, to go to New Zealand, are every bit as compelling to read about as the life and death ones she’s faced with at the end of the world.

To say much about how things unfold after Ruth and Nik emerge from the mouth of their unwitting saviour would be to spoil some of the more charming and emotional elements of the book; despite the sadness that they both clearly feel at the world that has been lost, they set about creating a new one for themselves, with the bones of the whale which sheltered them as its foundation. There are moments of tension here, of an entirely different kind to the ones which crop up in the awkward moments of Ruth’s previous life, as they struggle to survive their new reality. Sawyer uses cliffhangers to great effect here, cutting away from dramatic, life or death moments in the present to the everyday past, but it never feels like we’re being cheated by being dragged back, not when it’s all so vividly realised and engaging.

The Stranding is nothing less than a triumph – a beautiful story of love, family and friendship, told with real skill and empathy. This is the sort of book I would have no trouble recommending to practically anyone.

I just didn't click with this book. I liked the sound of it, and thought it would be different, and I would enjoy it .Alas I didn't, glad to see other readers did, and it is probably just me who didn't connect with it.

I was lucky enough to get a copy of this book on @netgalley on 18 March, but for some reason, I put off reading it for ages.

A novel set in post-apocalyptic times about a woman who shelters in the mouth of a whale, not a book you’d typically be drawn to? Well, it turns out I was putting off reading what is an exquisite debut and my favourite fiction so far this year.

In alternating chapters set in the Before (before a catastrophic apocalyptic event) and After, we get to know Ruth, a woman who, dissatisfied with her life, heads to New Zealand from the UK, deciding to pursue a lifelong passion for whales.

What happens next (and before), I’d really rather not say, suffice to say that this is an unforgettable book.

An allegorical tale of darkness into light, survival against the odds, the resilience of humanity, the fragility of life and the planet, a love story for the ages? All of the above. It brought me back to Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, and time I spent in NZ and Tonga in 2004 getting up close with humpback whales. It got under my skin pretty much from the first chapter. It’s bleak and hopeful and terrifying and promising and wonderful and cinematic, all at the same time. Suspend your disbelief and allow yourself to become submerged in it.

*The Stranding will be published on 24 June 2021 and is available to pre-order from all good bookshops. Thank you to @netgalley and the publishers @hodderbooks for an advance digital copy of this book. As always, this is an honest review. I’ve already pre-ordered my copy - as soon as I’d finished I ordered it. 5/5 ⭐️

TL;DR Recommendation:

Loved. This book is all about never settling for anything you don’t love and has a special wee space in my heart.

I told myself that after The End of Men I should really shelf the dystopian books because of *waves arms around* this hell we’re existing in, yet here I am. Glutton for punishment Jen reporting for duty. This is what you’re in for:

✨ The end of the world
✨ A dead whale
✨ Two strangers surviving in said dead whale
✨ Wholesome vibes for a shitty situation

This is the story of two tales – the Ruth from the Before times and the, uh… Ruth in the afters. Our wee Ruthy has a bit of a mundane/shitty life, bouncing from relationship to relationship in the hope of being loved. After landing with a handsome prick, she finally breaks free of his controlling ways (parts of the story got a bit too real for me) and does what everyone should do – run to the other side of the world to save the whales and ignore all the depressing news.

Ignorance is bliss after all.

Enter Nik. A laid-back photographer who’s now watching Ruth throw water over a stranded whale whilst no doubt musing over her sanity. When the end of the world is coming, people tend to lose their minds. After bonding over a joint, it’s time to die. Except Ruth (with her big brain energy) yells at Nik to get into the whale's mouth to ride out the chaos.

Crawling out, they face their new world. Earth 2.0 you might call it. Where everything is fucked and everyone else is dead. This is the story of their life, their struggles and their growth.

Right so now you’ve got the plot, this book caused a tear to slip down my face. This doesn’t happen often and is a very rare occurrence when it comes to books, but this one got me good.

The characters are delightful except, the plot got me good and this is genuinely a story that I’ve never endured before. It’s not a negative story that so many other dystopian books focus on – it actually leaves you feeling hopeful that maybe everything could be alright.

My only gripes?
– TIME MOVES SO FUCKING FAST. I get why (I honestly do) but I’d end a sentence, start a new one and a year had passed.
– I was way more intrigued by the post-apocalyptic Ruth than past Ruth. Found myself skim reading over what was happening in her old life but also get that it’s insanely important to the story.
– And finally, Ruth kept swapping between calling her parents mum and dad to their actual names. My poor brain kept thinking I’d forgotten people.

This is a beautiful wee book that shows us just how resilient we can be and that we should never, ever settle with someone just because you feel you should. Go save the whales.

The Stranding is out on the 24th June and you should absolutely grab it if this sounds like your jam.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Staughton for ARC.

This is a really assured debut and I look forward to reading more from this author.

The plot synopsis is familiar - Ruth is 30-something, living in London, job a bit of a rut, relationship is not all she'd hoped, needs a shake-up, so she decides to take a belated gap-year style trip, going to work on a whale conservation project in New Zealand.

Then everything changes. A cataclysmic climate event forces Ruth to build a new life from what remains.

This is a gorgeous novel, with the threads of Ruth's old life and her new one interwoven, so you get a dreamlike sense of time being fluid and both stories take on a fairytale or mythic quality. There is pathos and humour and grim determination. The characters are mostly very well drawn and that makes it easier to follow them on their respective journeys and care about their fate.
There is a hopeful strand through it that makes it feel less dystopian than the plot suggests.
I loved it and expect I'll think about it often.

The thing that stands out the most to me about this book is how the author’s writing style manages to be so utilitarian and still beautiful. It explores a woman’s ability to reach her potential and thrive in a modern society and in a totally isolated setting.

The chapters alternate between two timelines, before the nuclear blast and afterwards. Ruth is an ordinary woman in her thirties who has struggled in relationships and is trying to settle down and be what she thinks she should be, but when the blast strikes and she finds herself one of two survivors, she’ll only continue surviving if she becomes what she needs to be instead. There’s no room for pretention, just getting on with it.

The contrast between the timelines is haunting, it’s a character study rather than a series of political events leading up to a finale, about how an average person can become extraordinary if the situation calls for it.

I was completely absorbed into this story, Ruth is a very personable character that I think most readers will be able to relate with on one level or another and Nik, the man she survives with, is the same. He’s a regular bloke with his own baggage that has a will to survive, even if seemingly there’s no point in carrying on.

This is a thoughtful read and one I highly recommend.

Kate Sawyer's 'The Stranding' is a story of love and survival, set in both the present and a dystopian future.

Ruth is a primary school teacher. She moves from relationship to relationship, unable to find what she wants both from her work and her love life. After finding herself unhappy and controlled by her boyfriend, she decides to travel to New Zealand with the plan of volunteering in an ecology project and fulfilling her childhood dream of seeing whales. However, she has ben ignoring the News and on the way is something that could wipe out the whole human race.

Sawyer's use of two timelines to tell this story works really well. I really enjoyed the way the story unfolded and alternated between a very relatable present and an imagined future. I was caught up in Ruth's mission to follow her dreams and then her strength in managing to survive despite the odds. However, about two thirds of the way through I found my interest in the book starting to wane. I wanted there to be more answers to my questions, and more development in the story. The ending wasn't entirely satisfying either. However, having finished it, it is a book I continue to think about and would recommend to others.

Okay, so this is a dystopian end of the world type thing, but with way more whales than one would ordinarily expect in that range of books XD

Ruth is a Londoner living a highly modern life, struggling to make choices that she stays happy in for long. Meanwhile, several years later in another strand of the novel, Ruth is also in New Zealand to volunteer with a whale conservation project when the unimaginable happens and life changes unutterably.

As much as I admired the imagination of this survival story, I must say that I found it a particularly challenging topic to read about right now, maybe because of the year we’ve had, but if I’d known it was about an end of the world situation, I probably would not have chosen to read this. It has hope and beauty within it, and a marginally nice end but at the end of the day it’s still bleak, and I’m not sure I really got too much out of it.

My thanks to #NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Brutal and compassionate in equal measure, "The Stranding" is one of those books that makes you gasp and gets your pulse racing. At first, I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but it all became clear. Swapping between the present and "before" almost felt like 2 stories for the price of one and was a great way to present Ruth's story. Beautifully written and well-imagined, this one will linger for a long time.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

A stunning story of survival at the end of the world.
Told from two separate points in the same timeline, from the same perspective. It was fascinating to meet Ruth at the very beginning and see how she changes. It struck me as quite poignant that she managed to find a happy ever after, of sorts, after an EOD event.
Beautifully written, and so creative. I loved the way it all flowed and connected, and the bizarre nature of their survival blew my mind.

Ruth Lancaster is a woman in her thirties who has reached a turning point in her life, so she packs her bags and heads to New Zealand - only to find the end of all she has known. When the apocalypse reaches her, she survives by hiding inside a whale - and has to begin again after the end of everything. All of this takes place in the opening chapters of @katesaywer’s debut, and what is built from there is an unsettling, beautiful story of love and survival.
I can’t quite put into words how much I loved this book - calm and quiet, but utterly powerful and devastating at the same time. It’s been tricky to review this one, as I was swept up in the narrative. often forgetting to jot things down. But trust me - this is a good one.

The novel swings between the Before and the After, keeping us with Ruth all the time, and so we get to know the people she’s missing in the current timeline. Sawyer writes with such conviction and hold over her characters that each one feels like a much-missed friend by the end of the novel, Ruth especially. She’s a real everywoman, and chapters set in the Before add depth to her actions and characterisation in the After. We see the world through Ruth’s eyes, from the hubbub of London to the desolation of rural New Zealand, and while she’s on her journey, we only see what she sees. Because Ruth has buried her head in the sand regarding the end of days, we only find out what little she knows about it when it does arrive, making The Stranding a story less about the apocalypse than what comes after - and what we can do in the face of the end of everything.

If the above sentence made you think of the words “survival is inefficient”, you’re not alone. The Stranding calls to mind Station Eleven, an absolute classic of the genre: it’s got the same quiet hopefulness in the face of ruin and impeccably sparse writing style. That said, the stories are wildly different; it’s simply the vibe that’s the same. In terms of plotting, it reminded me of Bethany Clift’s wonderful Last One At The Party - they are two sides of the same coin, Clift’s narrative being big and bolshy, Sawyer’s much quieter, but each makes for riveting meditations on being the last woman left alive. I’ve made no secret of my love for an end-of-the-world novel, and this is one of the best I’ve read for sure. Haunting, meditative and powerful, The Stranding will gently reach into your heart and shake you to your core, and make you feel impossibly lucky.

I loved the premise of this book and couldn't wait to read it. Sadly I struggled to get into it. I took a break from it and then tried to continue but in the end I DNF.

Gorgeously written story of a woman who climbs into the mouth of a whale to survive the end of the world. Ruth's story is clever, thought-provoking, and it broke my heart.