The High House: Shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award

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He sounded tired. It was five hours behind where he and Francesca were, on the East Coast of the US, so it could only have been early afternoon, but perhaps they had been up all night, sitting round a table in a conference center trying yet again to force understanding where it wasn’t welcomed. I said,

The High House - Harvard Review

Jessie Greengrass’s vision of a near-future Britain drowned by an apocalyptic flood, part of the expanding genre of climate-change fiction, is among the books shortlisted for the 2021 Costa book awards. There are some beautiful lines about grief, such as Caro admitting that thinking of her late father “was unbearable. I could feel the shape of the empty space his hands had left behind”.Both a portrait of an unconventional family and of inexorable environmental tragedy, I found this extraordinarily moving." The tours are tailored to meet the national curriculum in various subjects. Weddings and Civil Ceremonies

High House Weddings - Essex High House Weddings - Essex

This, however, was the first time it flooded near my building (as far as I know). It was surreal, watching the water rise, inching its way further and further until it was lapping the bottom of the house across the street.The attic floor is home to the Staffordshire Yeomanry Regiment Museum, founded in 1794. As a local volunteer force the Yeomanry saw active service for over 200 years. The extensive range of items on display reflects their illustrious and distinguished history. There is a school and group tour programme and occasional themed tours, talks and workshops to support our history exhibitions. Throughout the year we have an exciting range of events, activities and workshops that bring added colour and bustle to the rooms. However, I think that at least for those reading it in (e-)print, the story would have been better presented in the third person rather than the first. Their personalities were not different enough, their way of speaking was the same.

The High House by Jessie Greengrass | Waterstones

This postapocalyptic, introspective drama is all about the love of family, isolation, hopelessness, and the will to go on. Readers will be asking the question, is it better to remember the life you had before and all that’s been lost, or to start fresh, only knowing this new existence? This novel is perfect for those who enjoy beautifully written, thought-provoking stories." This book is atmospheric and tense. It provokes a deep sense of foreboding and also melancholy for all that will be lost, not just in the story but in real life.

The High House is on a bluff and survived the devasting flood in its past. Would it hold up against what Francesca sees in store for the future? Believing that “it is a question of preparedness” she probes Grandy’s memories and resourcefulness, for Grandy, has been a caretaker for the entire village. It is through Grandy’s granddaughter, Sally, as well as Caro, Francesca’s step-daughter, that we will see much of the novel unspool. The last perspective is Pauly’s, Francesca’s son.

The High House” Takes a Surviving the End of the World in “The High House” Takes a

A book suffused with the joy and fulfilment of raising a child... The High House stands out." - The Guardian (UK) There are, however, moments of beauty: the weeks of summer heat feeling like “living in a headache”, or the way the protagonists cling to each other like a tangled “knot”. Greengrass is also chillingly articulate when describing our wilful blindness in the face of the initially creeping, then cascading inevitability of disaster: “Somehow, while we had all been busy, while we had been doing those small things which added up to living, the future had slipped into the present.” Ultimately, though, The High House doesn't feel like it amounts to anything new.I kept imagining living by a river, or worse, the sea, and watching the water surge, with nowhere to go but onto land. Imagining it swelling and carrying off everything not cemented to the earth - cars, garbage cans, children's toys, even people and animals. The High House is written from the POV of three characters - a young woman who grew up with her grandfather along the British coast, a young woman whose step-mother is a climate change activist, and the little boy who is her step-brother. The premise is dark, but Greengrass’s lyrical prose brings glimmers of light ... Despite the devastation, this not-quite family finds small moments of love and happiness." The high house sits above the waterline on an unnamed stretch of the English coast, some time in the near future. Below it lies a now-drowned world, carnage of a meteorological event of unprecedented destruction. “Each year, between water and neglect, less and less of the village remains,” reports Sally, the first of three narrators. “Grass grows in tufts from walls. Silt covers gardens. Crabs run across broken cobbles of the road.”