Review of Claire North's Latest

The End of the Day by Claire North
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Okay, first of all, I should note that I've loved Claire North ever since I read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August while sitting on a transatlantic aircraft and suffering a minor psychotic episode. So there. I'm biased in her favour to begin with and this book has done absolutely nothing to reduce that pro-North bias.

The basic premise is, Charlie, the central character is the Harbinger of Death. He applied for the job like any other when he came out of college and I have to say, despite the events of the novel, which I will not describe in order to reduce the chance of spoilers, I would LOVE that job.

Charlie is presented as a beautifully humane character who is always interested in living people. He is dignified in the face of adversity and probably the nicest man you'll ever meet.

In the beginning, I thought there was a clear lot through the book, but it's more a series of linked stories that follow one after the other not in the way it usually happens in novels but more in the way it happens in a life. Beautifully done.


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My Manifesto

Yes I'm a left wing liberal special snowflake
I've heard all your rants and that's all I wanna take
You talk about a tide of sub-humans swarming
Your borders but your minds are just not performing.
You claim to be taking back your sovereignty
Your mirrors show faces of mediocrity
This is my island just as much as it is yours
I roll the red carpet while you're locking the doors

Like you say YOU are I'm proud of this country.
So open for the poor, the tired and the hungry
I stand for compassion while you stand for the flag
Cause the hate that you preach makes it just a bloody rag

I'm proud of Thomas Payne and I'm proud of Ian Bone,
The Pistols and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
I'm proud of the Levellers and Ranters and Diggers,
Proud of Mary Woolstonecraft and Erskine Childers
Even Winston Churchill with our backs to the wall
Anybody ready kick our Masters in the balls
'Fuck off liar' to the Murdusconis of this world
Who write agendas that will demonise the poor

Like you say you are I'm damn proud of this country.
So open for the poor, the tired and the hungry
I stand for compassion while you stand for the flag
Cause the hate that you preach makes it just a bloody rag

I'm proud of M'Naghton and the Angry Brigade,
I'm proud of those who went to fight fascists in Spain
And those who chose to play football in the trenches.
The ones they transported or hanged unrepentant
When you come for the Gypsies and Muslims and Commies
I'm standing with your enemies, see the line? I'm on it!
I'm proud of the martyrs of Tolpuddle and Pentrich
Proud of the Sufragettes, the match girls and the Chartists

Like you say you are I'm damn proud of this country.
So open for the poor, the tired and the hungry
I stand for Solidarity you stand for the flag
Cause the hate that you preach makes it just a bloody rag

England is the home of Anarchism, it is our heritage.
Any attempt to regiment us is un-English
and the perpetrators should be deported
to the Palatinate where they belong.