Book Review: The Cabin at the End of the World

Spoilers ahead!

Seven little grasshoppers all caught and caged in a glass jar, their natural inclination to jump stymied by the teasing hole-strewn lid. This is the story, in essence, of Paul Tremblay’s indefinable quasi-apocalyptic 2018 book, The Cabin at the End of the World. In truth, the book is a story about grief and how we carry it. Or as a play on the omnipotence paradox, could God create a boulder so heavy even he could not lift it? If grief is your answer to “what is the boulder,” then perhaps God can, and he asks us to lift it for him. Again, this is my interpretation of Tremblay’s book: grief, love, God, and what it means to be in the “cabin at the end of the world.”

In one of the most foreboding openings to a book I can recall, Wen, who is almost 8, is methodically, empathetically collecting aforementioned grasshoppers in her glass jar at a secluded cabin with her adoptive parents, Daddy Eric and Daddy Andrew, when Leonard, a bulking young man, appears out of nowhere, to engage in small talk with her. Then, three more people appear, two women, Sabrina and Andriane, and another big man, Redmond, after which Leonard lets Wen knows he needs their family to save the world.

I should go ahead and note here: seven grasshoppers in a glass jar, now seven people in a cabin at the end of the world.

After a violent struggle with Eric and Andrew (mainly, Andrew fighting back, and Eric inadvertently banging his head on the cabin floor), they are tied up to chairs and told what the deal is: They need to sacrifice someone from their family in order to stop the apocalypse from happening — the oceans rising, followed by a plague, the sky falling, and “unending darkness” descending upon them. The four of them — heh, four, like the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse — shared visions of the end of the world happening and have no choice in being compelled to go forward with what this (whatever this ultimately ends up being).

Andrew is bitter and fuming mad, though, because he thinks the main possibility occurring here, overlapping with the fact of these four being cultist lunatics, is that they are attacking two gay men. So, they’re not merely cultist lunatics, but homophobic cultist lunatics. Maybe because of this preconceived idea or maybe it’s reality, Andrew believes Redmond goes by a different name and was the man who homophobically assaulted him in a bar years prior. The other important fact to know about Andrew is because of said bar attack, he keeps a gun for protection. Chekhov’s gun, folks.

Eric, meanwhile, who is somewhat secretively Catholic within his family, is sort of buying into what the Four Horsemen and women of the apocalypse are telling him. Or it’s because of his severe concussion symptoms, which constantly made me cringe because anything to do with brain injuries skeeves me out.

It was brilliant of Tremblay to have Andrew’s history with homophobic violence and Eric’s Catholicism and concussion, respectively, create doubt — or conviction, depending on how you look at it — flowing in opposite directions.

When Andrew and Eric, obviously, refuse to sacrifice anyone, it becomes incumbent upon the four to sacrifice one of their own, as futile as that may seem. They violently sacrifice Redmond, and then the tsunamis happen. Later, closing the loop on Chekhov’s gun, Andrew and Eric both escape from their confines, with Andrew making a run for their SUV, which has a secret compartment containing his gun safe and gun. He retrieves the gun. In the ensuing chaos back at the cabin, he shoots Adriane in self-defense. Then, he tussles with Leonard, and in so doing, pulls the trigger on his gun, mortally wounding Wen. I had a feeling as soon as the gun came into the action, finally, that we were destined to see Wen sacrificed.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a little detail I loved from Tremblay. A habit of Wen’s was to tuck her thumb into her hand when she was anxious or scared. When I read that, I chuckled because I do that, too, like when reading the moments leading up to Wen’s death!

But … crucially, according to Leonard, Wen’s death doesn’t count. See, it wasn’t a willful sacrifice. Eric and Andrew still need to sacrifice someone. That’s when they start debating among themselves whether what is happening is because of the end of the world or the orchestrated lunacy of the four. More calamities happen, like a plague unfurling from China and planes dropping from the sky. Sabrina kills Leonard as the next sacrifice. Then, she goes with Eric and Andrew to find the car keys to Redmond’s truck they left behind, and in so doing, uncovers Redmond’s gun. She then sacrifices herself via suicide. Eric considers doing the same. Andrew considers Eric shooting him, but Andrew also refuses to obey a God who doesn’t see Wen’s death as enough.

Which itself is a rebuke of an answer Leonard gave in this exchange earlier with Sabrina:

“Tell me. What kind of god is making all this happen?”

“The one we have.”

Eric and Andrew walk away, together, alive, and with Wen’s body. Which is a fitting image after a rumination Eric had dating back to childhood when a teacher asked him to analogize how heavy the cross must’ve been Jesus carried, and Eric said he couldn’t imagine anything being that heavy.

Such is grief. Such is the weight of Wen’s body and death. Such is the end of things. But as the last line of the book states, we will go on.

Tremblay’s book is one that will sneak up on you, like it did me. It’s a slow-burn, extremely violent even though it didn’t actually seem violent in the beat-by-beat moments (which is an enormous credit to Tremblay’s writing), and has a lot to say about grief, and our own macabre fascination with apocalyptic fiction — world-ending scenarios where billions of people die — while also being unwilling and unable to discuss and handle the death of one person or ourselves.

Because of the weightiness of the book and its slow-burn, I don’t think it’s a book for everyone, and I would thus, recommend it on a selective basis to people who would appreciate what Tremblay has to offer.