Description

Pol suffers from a very rare hormonal disorder that ages him erratically; when he was thirteen, his body aged ten years overnight, and now in his early thirties, he still has the outward appearance of a twenty-three-year-old. But with his condition dormant, Pol and his wife Caroline manage to live an ordinary life in Kilburn. They’re happy enough, even if having a young child has put something of a strain on their marriage. That and Pol’s obsessive interest in the writings of an obscure seventeenth-century Puritan prophet, Bartholomew Playfere, and his premonitions of ecological disaster and the end of the world.

But while Pol is failing to complete his research on Playfere, he encounters a radical new movement that argues that all economic and political events are part of an aeon-long struggle between the old and the young – that the ‘hoarist’ habit of violence, their need to conquer, has also affected how they treat the planet. The leader of this popular movement predicts an imminent inter-generational conflict – father against son, mother against daughter – that echoes Playfere’s own prophecies.

Against this increasingly fraught backdrop, Pol’s dormant condition threatens to resurface – putting both the safety and happiness of his family at risk.

Publisher Review

A novel rich in provocative and timely ideas, yet seductively readable... There's a rare originality here, and a willingness to take risks, that promises great things * Guardian * This debut novel glints with so many eye-catchingly surreal ideas - taking in invented historical figures, arcane medicine, absurdist politics, and vast conspiracies... Thoughtful, ambitious * Sunday Times * Rapturous, disruptive and quietly, complexly devastating, The End of Nightwork combines satire, elegy and fantastic portraiture to thrilling effect. A myriad of tender, terrifying cataclysms told with wit and true originality. A reckoning -- Eley Williams, author of Attrib. and The Liar's Dictionary Artful and ambitious... This is a debut teeming with ideas: about the nature of time, about politics, history, intergenerational trauma and how society should be structured. The novel is doing a lot, and having fun while doing it * Financial Times * A terrifically sympathetic, richly peopled and often very funny novel of family life and generational conflict... It manages to touch on both timeless and pressing concerns with sensitivity and humour * TLS * A strange and wonderful debut. A meditation on history and a lovingly-drawn portrait of a marriage, Aidan Cottrell-Boyce's novel goes straight to the anxious heart of our present, preapocalyptic moment with grace, wisdom, empathy and a boatload of brilliant one-liners -- Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies Cottrell-Boyce's assured debut is a wildly original story that considers everything we face in the modern age and then some -- Debut Novelists You'll Love in 2023 * Evening Standard * The End of Nightwork is a rare thing; a novel of ideas that also happens to be deeply moving. There is wit and erudition here, but never at the expense of the book's abiding tenderness, insight and empathy -- Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass A brilliant novel. Aidan Cottrell-Boyce writes with a sharp eye for humour and emotional resonance. This is a time-tumbling, unexpected and arresting novel of apocalypse, upheaval and familial love -- Sean Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide A totally absorbing novel on family, its pathos and its mysteries, on the end of our worlds, great and small, on how time fails us, and we fail time, with superb workings of comedy and political insight. As odd as life and as compassionate and engaging as a reader could hope for -- David Hayden, author of Darker With the Lights On One of the best debuts to appear in a long time * The Tablet * [A] clever, idiosyncratic debut... There are some affecting and well-observed scenes * Mail on Sunday * The sense of calamity, of impending doom, of turmoil both internal and external, all seem like Britain as it exists today -- Best New Novelists of 2023 * Daily Telegraph * The End of Nightwork is a satisfyingly odd novel. It is both an urgent grappling with the frightening times we live in and a meditation on what Chaucer called "the woe that is in marriage" * I Paper * The End of Nightwork braids the domestic with the political, showing both in a state of collapse * Literary Review * A novel of ideas... its latter sections are thought-provoking and feature genuinely chilling moments * Press Association * There's a lot going on in this ambitious and singular debut by Cottrell-Boyce... Timely ideas, and ideas about time, take the fore here... the novel's human drama, [is] at times painfully acute * Daily Mail * A curious, demanding book that lingers in the mind * The Gloss * The End of Nightwork is a prescient book about an oncoming apocalypse but is also a moving love story -- Christian Lisseman * Big Issue North *