But can a grossly unfit man, even with the best of intentions and the most fervent encouragement, run there? We’re able to compare Ed and Beth’s stories, to see the contrasts and similarities in their struggles, to watch them both suffer and evolve. I don't really know what to believe happened at the end and I wasn't in the mood for that much literary ambiguity at the end of the book.

What I liked: One of the things I absolutely loved about ‘The End of the World Running Club’ was that we got to see the before, during and after.

Ich schluckte meine aufsteigenden Magensäfte runter, sah mir das alles eine Weile an und fragte mich, was sich alle [sic! Was ich noch kritisieren muss, sind solche linkischen Tricks wie Zeitsprünge, wenn man es als Autor nicht gebacken bekommt, diese für den Leser interessanten Ereignisse intellektuell umzusetzen.

Ed is whiney and mostly useless, and if this were a real apocalypse he would probably be one of the first to die (probably because someone killed his whiney ass) but he and his unlikely friends do alright. Of course, the extremes of human behaviour are exhibited: the group do their best to maintain decency, but there are those whose focus on their own survival leads them just one tiny step short of cannibalism. The world is still a dangerous place and it’s when Beth starts to relax, letting her well-built guard down, that catastrophe strikes again. In seinem begrenzten, winzigen Universum könnte er der einzige Überlebende sein, abgeschnitten von Informationen aus der Außenwelt. It’s over a year since I read Adrian J Walker’s The End of the World Running Club and no other post-apocalyptic book has stuck with me as much as this one did, frequently popping up in bookish conversations about the end of the world (because when real life news is this bleak, talk naturally turns to the apocalypse).I'm not saying it's impossible, but there were quite a number of survivors (Gloria and Jenny Rae, for two) that couldn't remember the word "asteroids," were admittedly pretty uneducated and operating at a more primeval and ruthless level of being, yet were not only surviving, but were surviving rather successfully and suspiciously intelligently! While a small part of this book is certainly about running (and it's clear our author has experienced a runners wall, high and all the emotions and pains that come with it); the reality is it's really just your average the world went to hell the moment we lost amenities book.