Mark and I stared at the words for a few seconds before they made sense and I had processed my own dull memory of the night before. I don’t really do running clubs. I run as I dream—alone. But if I did join a club, it would certainly be to run through a post-apocalyptic wasteland with some new found mates, trying to reach my family before they shipped off forever. This is part of the scenario in the book, “The End of the World Running Club," a novel by Adrian Walker. The novel is a wonderful, harrowing, epic, witty, and emotional story of the apocalypse and one man’s attempt to be the father he wanted to be after the world ends. The first four chapters would make an amazing short story about an asteroid(s) impact on Earth. I rate those four chapters 5 out of 5. And then the rest of the book comes... and ruins the magic. Suddenly, the air-raid siren stopped. The air around us seemed to lurch in the silence as if we’d all just hurled ourselves over a cliff edge. The End of the World Running Club centers around the apocalypse but with very human themes. How did you relate to the characters and situations in the book?

Ich war kein Jäger, kein Handwerker, kein Krieger. Ich wusste nichts und ich konnte nichts und garantiert nicht für meine Familie sorgen." (S. 58) For the first time in his life, Ed is distraught at being separated from his wife and kids. He needs to get to them, but they’re halfway to Cornwall and he’s in Edinburgh with no cars, diminishing supplies, and only the people with him to rely on. So, what do you do when you have precisely 550 miles of ruined roads, crumbling cities and inhospitable wastelands between you and your family? You start walking. With just a few steadfast companions and a ton of obstacles in his way, Ed’s long journey to the West Country begins. It’s a tough and treacherous mission that Ed soon realises isn’t going to get him to his family on time, and so the end of the world running club is created. I received this in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. Thank you to the author, Adrain J. Walker, and the publisher, Ebury, for this opportunity. Anyway, yes, I hold up my hand, guilty again. I insisted on my right to sleep. Beth conceded, but only on the proviso that I took the early shift on Saturdays and Sundays. I couldn’t really argue with her. There’s only so far you can push it with a woman who’s just given birth. So Ed starts running. He's not sure why. It's not a conscious decision. And he's never done it before. He just needs to run. With a crew of four others, Ed begins making his way south through a devastated post-apocalyptic landscape.The words actually caught in my throat. Ridiculous. I felt dizzy, the way you do when you’re a child about to call out for your parents in the night. Exzessiv mit fragiler Männlichkeit und Vaterschaft beschäftigt. Wenn man für die Dystopie konstatiert, dass sie immer Bruchstellen markiert, diffuse Bedrohungsszenarien bündelt (gesellschaftliche Strukturen, die jeden Moment zusammenbrechen könnten; die bedrohte Kleinfamilie; das kaputte Eigenheim; die bedrohte Nation), so ist es hier das Mann-Sein und die Vaterschaft, die quasi von oben zertrümmert werden. I thought this was just going to be an average book but it was really quite good. Ed is whiney and mostly useless, and if this were a real apocalypse he would probably be one of the first to die (probably because someone killed his whiney ass) but he and his unlikely friends do alright. Well, not really...a few die, Ed is maimed, and his wife leaves on the boat without him but Ed learned some valuable life lessons...which may have been more useful to him before the world ended but better late than never. Before the first step, before the first muscle twitches, before the first neuron fires, there comes a choice: stand still or move. You choose the right option. Then you repeat that choice one hundred thousand times. You don’t run thirty miles, you run a single step many times over. That’s all running is; that’s all anything is. If there’s somewhere you need to be, somewhere you need to get to, or if you need to change or move away from where or what you are, then that’s all it takes. A hundred thousand simple decisions, each one made correctly. You don’t have to think about the distance or the destination or about how far you’ve come or how far you have to go. You just have to think about what’s in front of you and how you’re going to move it behind you.”

I was only halfway to the age when it’s OK to feel lethargic, cold, bitter, and confused, and yet I felt those things every minute of every day. I was overweight. I ate double portions, drank double measures, avoided exercise. I was inflating like a balloon on an abandoned gas cylinder. My world perplexed me—every day was a haze of confusion.In an age full of streaming news, changing politics, and constant stimulation how do you envision the world reacting to the announcement of impending doom, and how would you prepare yourself? Don’t get me wrong—I loved my wife and I loved my kids, but that doesn’t mean to say I had to be happy about it. For me, then at least, being a husband and father meant being simultaneously exhausted and terrified. I was like a man on a cliff edge, nodding off. Love my wife. Love my kids. You have to take care with your tenses when the world ends.