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The Way Things End

by

Charles David

A beautifully-written novel exploring the inter-connectedness of various disparate characters in the twentieth century...

The year is 1940 and blues musician Roosevelt Sands is on the run for murder when he lays down in the middle of a southern crossroads and plays a song that initiates the collapse of the universe. What follows is the slow demise of the world, as the music expands outward from its source to the edge of creation and back again. For forty years the music seeks to return to the place from which it came. During this time, a slow unravelling of reality brings forth supernatural events that influence and shape the interconnected lives of people around the world. People like Elena, a refugee child of World War Two, writing stories in rural Romania, and Earn, waking to find the corpse of a giant whale in his back yard. Those who live in the last days do so unknowingly as they are exposed to the strange collapse of the world and universe around them.

The Way Things End is Charles David’s first book. When he isn’t contemplating the universe, he is writing, drawing, designing games, and teaching English at a small liberal arts college. He lives in the US on a small farm with his wife. He enjoys gardening, insects (except for when they bother his garden), and is especially fascinated with cicadas. He loves whales, cats, dogs, and goats. He has grown tired of thinking about the future, and believes all wizards should live in towers.

Read the first chapter of The Way Things End here.

Reviews:

‘. . . accomplished, dark and troubling . . . It finds beauty and some measure of reason in the midst of chaos and tells us about it in prose suffused with a fractured, dislocating and chaotic beauty.’ Jon Gower, Horla

'In THE WAY THINGS END Charles David proves his command of literary expression and unassuming empathy . . . Through the slow decay of reality, THE WAY THINGS END is a sincere consideration of life and circumstance. Unsettling, but a worthwhile read for artful contemplation.' Aurealis 125