The Cabin at the End of the World

by Paul Tremblay

I saw this at Book People and thought it looked interesting, and then I found it in Libby (library app), so I could read it for free on my phone. The first third of it was pretty compelling. A young Chinese girl named Wen, adopted by a gay American couple, is catching grasshoppers outside a remote cabin where they are vacationing. A huge, seemingly gentle man named Leonard walks up, and they talk about catching grasshoppers.

Then things turn erie. She begins to leave, and he tells her that nothing that’s about to happen is her fault. She goes inside.

Leonard and three others want into the cabin. They are carrying weird weapons made of garden tools bent and attached to each other. They all have had a vision that the world is about to end. The only way out is for Wen, Andrew, and Eric to decide voluntarily to sacrifice one of themselves.

But after the premise is set up, I found it tedious. And the ending is ambiguous and doesn’t tie up loose ends (is Redmond really the same guy who attacked Andrew years earlier? What’s the connection?). The heros (?) don’t really defeat any threats, and we never learn what’s going on. So why did I read this?