BE HERE TO LOVE ME AT THE END OF THE WORLD

A young couple copes with bad weather and looming apocalypse in this debut novel.

Sam and Eleanor share an apartment in Brooklyn. She designs websites. He freelances as a proofreader and cooks nice dinners. They’re young and in love, although Sam’s college debt hangs over him and Eleanor’s thyroid nodule could portend trouble. They are the main story, but the first-person narrator also presents recurring motifs such as epic snowstorms, an impending nuclear attack on New York City, commuting woes, secret police who put people in black plastic bags and take them away in vans, historical events such as the killing of Black activist Fred Hampton, a German orchestra that wolves hold captive in an Italian castle, and angels in various contexts. The narrator frequently refers to violent acts by regular police, as in “the cops are shooting children in the street.” There’s a faux naif quality to the voice here, as if the narrator wants to write a nice love story but the incessant bad news from the nasty world keeps getting in the way. The prose is naif-appropriate. It has the graceless exuberance and emotional swings of a letter home from summer camp. The narrator occasionally throws up his hands in frustration: “Sam brought her coffee, or he stayed in bed. I can’t tell you everything that happens.” While the voice and prose can be humorous and even charming at times, finally they become tiresome. And frustrating since it’s clear that a sharper intelligence lies beneath the ingenuous facade. Fletcher brings it out for the historical asides, for the rants on debt, even for the detailed recipes of the meals Sam prepares. His decision to assume a pose somewhere between Forrest Gump and Mister Rogers—“Listen sometimes we just have to let things in the world be nice”—doesn’t serve him well.

A strange, amusing work that leaves one puzzled by the author’s choices.