The End of the World is Bigger Than Love

The End of the World is Bigger Than Love by Davina Bell, (Text), 2020, RRP $24.00 pb  ISBN: 9781922268822

Reviewed by Pauline Hosking

This intriguing YA novel combines unreliable narrators with magic realism. Davina Bell creates a world in which reality and fantasy join hands and dance together. It’s a challenging, yet satisfying, read.

The world has become a place of terror, public executions and climate disaster. Identical twin sisters, Summer and Winter, live in isolation on a remote island. Years ago their father brought them there. He was a scientist, responsible, among other things, for The Greying, an illnesss that ultimately kills.

Summer is the more hip, talkative sister with a well-developed sense of humour. Winter is quieter and kinder. The girls grow into teenagers, surviving in their own intense reality, eating through a stockpile of tinned food, reading and re-reading their mother’s favourite books. Fictional characters fulfil their need for friends. The words of characters in To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Outsiders and The Power of One are quoted and requoted.

Then a mysterious stranger, Edward, appears, disrupting the girls’ carefully constructed world. Summer only refers to him as ‘the bear’. Winter falls in love.

Alternating chapters written by Summer and Winter draw the reader into a fantastical world where nothing is as it seems. Their mother didn’t die when Winter was born. Edward hasn’t appeared by chance. The sisters are not living on an island.

Most unexpected of all is the hint that perhaps there is only one sister. Has Winter created a second self to help her cope with so many horrific life experiences? After the final page there’s a quote from Albert Camus: ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer…’

The book is full of wonderfully-written dreamlike sequences: the talking whale is especially memorable. YA readers will delight in its complexity and intricate plotting.

Winter’s Tale

Winter’s Tale by Nike Sulway, Illustrated by Shauna O’Meara (Twelfth Planet Press) PB RRP ISBN 978-1-922101-54-9

Reviewed by Nean McKenzie

Winter's tale is the first book released by Tatiana, the new children's imprint of Twelfth Planet Press. The story is of an orphan child called Winter, who is found in a fruit box under a full moon and moves around houses and foster parents, looking for a place to call home. A crowned blue hare that lives in the moon (but can come to earth) follows Winter's progress. Beautiful colour illustrations by Shauna O'Meara on each page add to the story of Winter's journey. 

Winter is written clearly as genderless from the second page. " 'Is it a boy or girl?' somebody asked. The boy shrugged. 'Who knows?' he said. That's how things were with Winter, right from the start.’

Winter's Tale uses magic realism, with some quite surreal turns of events. The part of the story where Winter meets Wren and she teaches him to skateboard is the most realistic part and the ending is certainly the most fantastical. Winter lives with hunters, then in a city apartment, then on a ship at sea but none of these are home. Then Winter finds Bo and Fox, a gay couple who live in a town with shifting streets and it is here that Winter is accepted, makes friends and finds out who they really are.

The main concept behind Twelfth Planet Press is to publish works by women and underrepresented voices. Winter's Tale could be categorised as middle-grade but it's one of those books that can be equally read by adults or children. It's an attractive looking book and is a quite unique read with interesting characters and a story that stretches the imagination.