The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay is a thrilling ride of small proportions. What do I mean by this? Well, Tremblay delivers jabs and punches right to your midsection. The cabin is the main setting, so such jabs can only be thrown in a small, defined space. As you might imagine, this means that when the thrills start coming, you don’t have much room; you hit a wall, and then must turn and face them head-on. There’s nowhere to run or hide.
Plot Summary: Wen, Andrew and Eric’s adopted daughter, is catching grasshoppers in the front yard, alone. Her dads are in the back, unaware of her activities. Wen is approached by Leonard, a true mountain of a man, well over 6-feet tall. At first, Wen is guarded, but then she is won over by Leonard’s smile. They get to talking, and she discovers he is great at catching grasshoppers. But then the conversation turns off, and Wen feels more and more like she needs to go inside and be with her dads. It’s really due to the kinds of things Leonard’s been saying: “Nothing that’s going to happen is your fault. Your dads aren’t going to want to let us in, but they have to…We need your help to save the world.” (pg 28-29)
Suddenly three more people show up, all similarly dressed, and all carrying strange weapons in their hands. Leonard says that Wen must explain to her dads what is happening, and that she has to convince them to let the four strangers into the cabin so they can all talk.
The dads don’t let the group inside, because they can see Wen is scared, and they don’t know who these people are. Frustratingly, Tremblay has Eric and Andrew go back and forth for pages and pages, asking if all the doors and windows were locked. It turns out that, no, the windows were not actually locked. Shortly, the quartet of bad guys breaks into the cabin in dramatic fashion. Quickly enough, Andrew and Eric are tied to some chairs.
Tremblay easily switches character viewpoints, telling Andrew and Eric’s side of the story (or their pasts), and then effortlessly switching to Wen, or Leonard’s, or some of the others’, views. There is quite a lot of background detail for each character; we learn that Andrew was attacked in a bar for being gay, which prompts him to take up boxing and the use of firearms to feel safer. We find that Leonard, Adriane, Redmond, and Sabrina don’t really know one another well. They’ve only met recently, through a messaging board, and apparently, they have had similar “visions” regarding the end of the world. Leonard tells Eric and Andrew that they have to make a sacrifice, or many millions of people will die.
Leonard turns on the television, which was previously showing cartoons for Wen. He shows the two men the news, using the program that’s playing as proof that the world is coming apart, maybe even ending. Planes are crashing. There’s a tsunami. A set of earthquakes, one of which causes said tsunami.
Leonard uses these events as proof that the world is ending, telling the heroes they have got to make a choice, a sacrifice, before it’s too late.
And will they sacrifice one of themselves to save millions, even billions? The news is saying these horrible events are happening, but Andrew notices Leonard, and even the other three, keep checking their watches. Who the hell wears watches anymore? he thinks to himself. Maybe, he says to Eric, they keep checking their watches because they wanted to see a specific program at a specific time. Maybe, he says, they even knew what would be broadcast. Maybe these events were already happening, sacrifice or no sacrifice.
I should mention that Andrew’s attack comes back to haunt him. He says that Redmond is actually the same man, named O’Bannon, (older and 50 pounds heavier), that attacked him in that bar all those years ago. Perhaps then, they are all being targeted for some sick and twisted hate crime, a sort of bizarre continuation of what happened all those years ago.
As you may imagine, none of the three heroes is willing to sacrifice one of their own. This creates an obvious problem for Leonard and the others. In his mind, a sacrifice has to be made to save millions. I sort of began wondering what these grand, end of the world visions really were. Are the visions of the end actually real? Did Leonard and the others really have them, collectively, or are they just saying that as a reason for why they decided to break into the cabin?
Some of these questions are answered and some, unfortunately, aren’t. Tremblay uses a lot of words, but the reader gets the sense that, because everything happens inside the cabin (except for the first scene, a scene on the back deck, and some flashbacks), the visions sort of seem “out there,” and as a result they don’t have much of an impact. Which is really a shame, being that the visions seem intricately tied to the novel’s title.
Ending: The ending was really pretty terrible. It’s one of those endings where you expect something final to happen, and nothing ever really does. I feel potential readers would benefit greatly from knowing why the world is ending, as well as how. And, more importantly, IS the world actually ending?
The conclusion, if you can call it that, leaves a lot to be desired, which I guess isn’t really saying much; but of course, I don’t want to give anything away, in case you decide to give this book a go.
Final Thoughts: The Cabin at the End of the World is a showcase for Tremblay’s talents. This man knows how to write and engage the reader. He does, at certain points, tend to drone on and on. One sequence near the end of the book went on for at least 17 pages. I was ready to pull my hair out and took most of the day to finish the 30 or so pages I had left. If you haven’t read Tremblay before, I recommend that you don’t read this one first. Try A Head Full of Ghosts, a Bram Stoker Award winner for 2019, and then maybe come back to this one, once you get to know the author’s style a bit better.
Grade: B- for gore, blood and decent descriptions. Character development is solid. Beware of long soliloquies. Many people will not like the ending (I did not), and this affects the book’s grade. But, all in all, the book was entertaining. If you like horror fiction, give this book a try!
Have a good day!