Birdwatching At The End Of The World by G.W. Dexter (book review).
Stephen Ballantyne, our first-person narrator for Birdwatching At The End Of The World, is the only boy at Near School for Girls, Near Island, Aberdeen, AB12 3LE. It’s a British boarding school with a smattering of foreign students, and he grew up there because his mother is the headmistress. His father was an unknown Spaniard she had a fling with years ago and is no longer around.
The world ends on Tuesday, 27 April 1975, in Stephen’s world, just before ten in the morning. Most of the schoolgirls were away on trips to the mainland, but the fourth form was having a swimming lesson when the bomb went off, smashing all the windows. Sadly, Stephen’s mother, a responsible headmistress, went out after the event to check on a girl who had been grooming Murray Mint, the school horse, and was caught in the heat blast of a second bomb minutes later. This left her son orphaned in a new world order on an isolated island with fifty-four girls.
After the apocalypse, survival becomes the top priority. Luckily, they have Pearl Wyss, a short, unattractive but very clever girl with a photographic memory who quickly organizes an election and gets herself made leader, mostly because she seems to have a plan and knows what to do. They have shelter, as most buildings survived the blast in faraway Aberdeen, and they have enough food and water for the short term but need to plan ahead. Fresh water came from the mainland, and there is no natural supply. Pearl knows where it might be found. Brilliantly, she organizes various work parties that not only keep the girls occupied but give them some hope for a better future.
Stephen goes along. He isn’t stupid but seems to lack any drive or ambition. For some men, being the only one among fifty-four teenage girls would be a dream, but Stephen is only keen on one, Titania Pickering, who has no interest in him at all. Such is life. Pearl Wyss seems almost fond of him in an indifferent sort of way and often consults him on her plans. She soon proves herself not only capable but utterly ruthless and a strong feminist not keen on mankind. She blames men for the apocalypse.
The island is self-sufficient and needs nothing from the outside world, nor does it want anything to do with it, at least as long as Pearl is in charge. However, in a post-apocalyptic world where large tracts of land are radioactive, survival is difficult. Inevitably, other people make it to the island. The girls don’t have to look for trouble; it comes to them.
This could get heavy, but our narrator is cool, sardonic, and rather laid back. His favourite book is The Inimitable Jeeves, and his favourite television show is The Rise And Fall Of Reginald Perrin. This will give some idea of the tone of his writing. On the search for water, he says, “If you eternally hope for springs, hope springs eternal.” On the prospect of rescuers from the mainland, he tells us, “The day did not bring the arrival of strong men in boats, nor even puny men in coracles.” There’s maybe a hint of The Diary Of Adrian Mole here, too, and it makes for an entertaining read.
It’s not a comedy, though. Much of the book is deadly serious and also informative, especially if you are ever stranded on a remote island with plenty of trees and wildlife. The subject matter is often dark. The worst events are simply told without any effort to wring emotion from the reader, and they are all the more harrowing for that. Under Pearl’s leadership, these able girls fare surprisingly well, but their behaviour is sometimes shocking for nice young ladies at a fee-paying school. I should mention that there is very little sex in the book, though it is a subject of discussion at times. Aged fourteen when the world ended, the girls were probably just a little too young for it to loom large; for pre-Internet 1975, it was a different era than today.
Any story like this must bring to mind Lord Of The Flies by William Golding, which featured a group of boys stranded on an island. As I recall, they made rather a hash of things and turned savage. I read the book at school, probably around 1975. It might be assumed that girls would fare better. In a sense, they do, but their way of adapting to the new circumstances may surprise you. It may even offend you.
Oddly, there was a real-life event in which boys from New Zealand were isolated for a while, but they coped well and behaved in an exemplary fashion. It just goes to show that fact is stranger than fiction sometimes. Fiction is more fun, though, and Birdwatching At The End Of The World is an interesting and entertaining read that I highly recommend.
Eamonn Murphy
August 2024
(pub: NewCon Press, 2024. 218 page small enlarged paperback. Price: £13.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-91495-385-9)
check out website: www.newconpress.co.uk
