Review - The Cabin at the End of the World

Leonard says, “Before you go inside to get your dads, you have to listen to me. This is important.” Leonard crawls out of his sitting position and onto one knee, and his eyes brim with tears. “Are you listening?”

Wen nods her head and takes a step back. Three people turn the corner onto the driveway: two women and one man. They are dressed in blue jeans and button-down shirts of different colors; black, red, and white. The taller of the two women has white skin and brown hair, and her white shirt is a different kind of white than Leonard’s. His shirt glows like the moon, wheras hers is dull, washed, almost gray. Wen catalogs the apparent coordination in how Leonard and the three strangers dress as something important to tell her dads. She will tell them everything and they will know why the four of them are all wearing jeans and button-down shirts, and maybe her dads can explain why the three new strangers are carrying strange long-handled tools.

Leonard says, “You are a beautiful person, inside and out. One of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met, Wen. Your family is perfect and beautiful, too. Please know that. This isn’t about you. It’s about everyone.”

I’d heard a bit of a stir around Paul Tremblay, in particular about his novel A Head Full of Ghosts. As is always the way you can never find the book you wanted to check out, but another novel by him called The Cabin at the End of the World was on display in Foyles and seemed interesting, so I thought I’d give it a try (who said point of sale tables don’t work).

The book starts intriguingly enough, a young girl named Wen is playing outside in a grass field while her adoptive parents, Eric and Andrew, unpack their things into a small cabin in New Hampshire. A large man comes up and starts talking to Wen, shortly after 3 more people follow, all armed with brutal looking medieval weapons.

What follows is a story that mostly plays out in the front room of the cabin. The four strangers, who had never met each other before that morning other than via online chatrooms, are convinced that either Eric or Andrew must voluntarily offer themselves up as a sacrifice, or the world will end. The strangers supposedly have had nightmares showing them what will happen if this doesn’t happen. Obviously, both Eric and Andrew are convinced these are homophobic maniacs and actively struggle against them. Meanwhile the television in the background peppers the action with news bulletins show stories of floods and other disasters, spurring the strangers on even more in their belief that either Eric or Andrew must die.

The premise is interesting, but its written in a fairly ham-fisted way. Each chapter is written from the perspective of Wen, Eric or Andrew, and their thought processes and internal monologues are prosaically recorded on the page. I feel this would have been an excellent, thought provoking short story on the spectrum of belief vs bigotry, but what we have instead is reading over each character deciding when to loosen their ropes, or whether to rugby tackle or kick someone in the leg. It felt like a philosophical conversation you might have over a beer translated into people getting smashed in their torsos with hammers.

More than anything, it read like someone wanted their book to be transcribed into a screeplay. The whole thing felt very readable, very cinematic. It felt like the sort of thing that would fit better as an 80-minute film. I did not know at the time, but was unsurprised to find out it had in fact been made into a film. It probably works better that way.