This Is the End

The title is the first clue that something unusual is happening. Stella Benson's 1917 novel opens with a family galvanized into action: their vanished relative James has disappeared, and so they set out to find him. But here is the twist that gives the book its peculiar charm: James doesn't want to be found. What follows is a gently comic expedition through English country lanes and London drawing rooms, as the family hunts for a man actively evading them, all while the Great War grinds on in continental Europe, its distant thunder shaping every conversation and silences between them. Benson writes with a poet's attention to the small things that make up ordinary life: a particular quality of afternoon light, the way a letter goes unanswered, the comedy of relatives convinced they know best. The novel asks what we owe to each other when the world is ending, and answers with quiet grace: perhaps only the willingness to look, even when looking is futile. It is tender, often funny, and devastating precisely because it refuses to raise its voice.