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REVIEW: I Think We've Been Here Before by Suzy Krause

 


Blurb: 

Marlen and Hilda Jorgensen’s family has received two significant pieces of news: one, Marlen has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Two, a cosmic blast is set to render humanity extinct within a matter of months. It seems the coming Christmas on their Saskatchewan farm could be their last.

Preparing for the inevitable, they navigate the time they have left together. Marlen and Hilda have channeled their energy into improbably prophetic works of art. Hilda’s elderly father receives a longed-for visitor from his past. Hilda’s teenaged nephew goes missing, and his mother refuses to believe the world is ending. All the while, Hilda’s daughter struggles to find her way home from Berlin with the help of an oddly familiar stranger. For everyone, there’s an unsettling feeling that this unprecedented reality is something they remember.

As the planet holds its collective breath to see what happens next amid chaos, denial, acceptance, and hope, this one family determines to live every moment as if it’s their last. Because, well, it just might be.


Review:

"Life just ended suddenly one day, right when people were in the middle of it."

It’s bad enough finding out you’ve got a terminal illness and you’re going to die soon, but then you find out even if you somehow survive, it’s the end of the world anyway.

This book was breathtakingly complicated. It was hopeless, tragic and heartbreaking but also beautiful, a moving snapshot of what being human, being alive really means when it’s all you have left. A truly unique end of the world story with a quietly beautiful twist and a lot of soul.

We follow the family over the last three months of life on earth, starting in relative mundanity. Nora tries to start a new life in a new city after a heartbreak, Hilda and Marlen have their family over for dinner, Iver contemplates his life as he grows old, Hank and Irene try to understand having a teenage son; perfectly normal lives before life itself becomes chaos and memory, reality, history start to unravel and what it means to be alive is called into question. Each of their perspectives being carefully recorded and their personalities still shining even in a third person style with each person finding solace, anger and comfort in different places.

The storytelling was slow, but it worked - it was slow in the way of someone taking their time, taking in their surroundings and stopping to think about everything they see. The writing was almost dreamlike, ethereal and invoked an almost hazy effect as it moved seamlessly from one moment to the next.

This story explores loss on multiple levels. The loss of a relationship, the loss of health, or love, or life. Hilda is angry that Marlen is dying, but heartbroken. Ole has gone missing in a different kind of loss. It truly takes time to hold a mirror to the feeling and show just how complex yet universal it can be.

A poetic portrait of life and death that captures the universally understood experiences of being human.


⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐


  • I was gifted a reviewers copy of this title in return for a review. 


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