This book is one of the first published by Swift Press, a new independent publishing company launched in 2020 and part of the Independent Alliance. At first I thought this book wasn't for me, but I'm a depressed person already so reading about four people trying to survive after a a climatic disaster is no problem for me to read, especially since I fear that this can and will probably happen someday. It is definitely not far-fetched. As Caro says: “There is a kind of organic mercy, grown deep inside us, which makes it so much easier to care about small, close things, else how could we live? The story is quiet, and the pacing is measured, matching the lives of those in High House, and making the devastation and losses outside this tiny place of safety all the more horrifying.

The High House by Jessie Greengrass | Goodreads

One of the most striking images in the book is of the fall of the last main building – the pub – with the locals having one last drink even as the pub was washed away around them.

Greengrass is a thoughtful writer and The High House is full of elegant, resonant sentences about human fallibility, complacency, selfishness and our unquenchable capacity for love."

The High House by Jessie Greengrass | Goodreads The High House by Jessie Greengrass | Goodreads

The Ancient High House offers school tours covering keystages 1 through 3 and activities include pomander making, calligraphy, wattle and daub, and coin minting. and I walked down the road to where Pauly was waiting, standing at the gate in his coat and hat and mittens. 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). He sounded tired. It was five hours behind where he and Francesca were, on the East Coast of the US, so it could only have been early afternoon, but perhaps they had been up all night, sitting round a table in a conference center trying yet again to force understanding where it wasn’t welcomed. I said,The High House is on a bluff and survived the devasting flood in its past. Would it hold up against what Francesca sees in store for the future? Believing that “it is a question of preparedness” she probes Grandy’s memories and resourcefulness, for Grandy, has been a caretaker for the entire village. It is through Grandy’s granddaughter, Sally, as well as Caro, Francesca’s step-daughter, that we will see much of the novel unspool. The last perspective is Pauly’s, Francesca’s son.

The High House imagines England after a Jessie Greengrass’s The High House imagines England after a

This was beautifully written and told in the voices of the three younger people who live in the high house! A climate scientist and her husband prepare a place for their young son and older daughter in the event of a climate disaster. High house is where four people will come as our climate spirals out of control and into a full fledged climate armegeddon. Although this is being called a post apocalyptic novel, I believe it a prescient warning of events that will actually happen and that in many ways is happening now. 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! 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. So haunting, and so so beautifully written. I had to keep rereading lines to absorb their beauty, but this was such a compelling read I finished it in a day.

by Jessie Greengrass

The next morning, when I went downstairs, father was in the kitchen drinking coffee, and Francesca was gone. My only complaint is the way the story is structured. It’s oddly told in only five chapters with multiple scene breaks. The scene breaks made it more bearable but then there were POV switches (clearly marked within the chapter) that made it feel like it could have been broken down a bit more to feel more readable? I likely wouldn’t have even noticed but I read it on kindle and irks me when it says I have an hour left in my chapter. he asked, and I shrugged one shoulder up and slid my eyes away. There had been daffodils in the park at Christmas. The coast path had been redrawn at six different places over the last three years. Greengrass said she wanted to explore the “disconnect” between our knowledge of the impending disaster of the climate crisis, and our inability to act on it – “that kind of weird space where you can watch something happening that’s terrible, and know that it’s happening, and be afraid of it happening, but still just get on with all of the ordinary things of life”.