Adrienne Celt
novelist, cartoonist,
and friend to imaginary people and animals
Celt is a smart, convincing novelist, and her ambitious tweaks of the [time loop] concept are fascinating and fun to grapple with.
End of the World House is thoughtful, funny, provocative, and creative…. While there’s a temptation to compare the book’s time-bending elements to pop-culture products like Groundhog Day or the streaming series Russian Doll, there is also in Celt’s never-ending museum an echo of the infinite library of Jorge Luis Borges, and in her ruined world where we can only do the best we can, of Samuel Beckett. The author has triumphed by rendering a personal tale against a backdrop of global significance.
Love can evolve when given a chance, just like anything else. End of the World House finds a way to give love the necessary space for that evolution — all within the same singular time period. It is a deft and intricate novel, woven together so neatly and tightly that one can’t see the seams, no matter how hard one strains.
End of the World House is a post-apocalyptic novel that holds the persistence of the everyday. It’s a book that offers a deep look into coping with loss, endings, and change, but most of all, it offers a deep look into Bertie’s character and allows the audience to live with her through a myriad of different lives, through the ending of so many worlds.
Adrienne Celt has crafted something brilliant with End of the World House. This book is an intoxicating mix of beauty, art, and mystery. Celt writes about the tangled threads of close friendship with tremendous skill and a wild amount of heart. It’s a novel that’s undeniably funny, unafraid to look at the messy ways we unwittingly complicate our lives as well as the lives of the people closest to us. A compelling look at intimacy and its myriad vulnerabilities, End of the World House is a stunner.
Adrienne Celt’s new novel depicts a fraying world (climate crisis, political violence, social upheaval) that’s frighteningly recognizable. It’s a timely novel, as well as one that has great fun exploring what time itself is. Yet End of the World House asks a question that’s timeless: how do we make a meaningful life?