Onyx reviews: Where I End by Sophie White

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 06/11/2023

It's a rare thing for a book to take this reader completely by surprise, but Where I End does just that. It is an exquisitely beautiful, profoundly disturbing and frequently grotesque short novel that almost defies description.

Much of the opening section is taken up by describing the main character's bafflingly complicated and arduous living circumstances. Nineteen-year-old Aoileann (pronounced "Eeeeel-in") lives in a remote house on an Irish coastal island where she and her family are shunned by the other residents, who themselves are considered odd by mainlanders. The island itself is a strange and uncanny place, too rocky to inter the deceased, so the residents have come up with a monstrous burial routine. Aoileann's cottage is at the end of the lane that leads to this grim location.

Aoileann and her grandmother's waking hours are mostly taken up by caring for the thing in the bed, which turns out to be Aoileann's mother, Aoibh. White forces readers to explore every terrible aspect of this disgusting creature and the daily ministrations required to care for it, which are laid out in explicit and grueling prose. The thing is bed-bound and incommunicative. At times it seems like a monstrously heavy burden and yet it is simultaneously fragile and emaciated. It must be fed and bathed like a baby, and its omnipresent sores carefully treated. All of this leaves little time for Aoileann to have a life, which is moot since no one on the island will even look at her let alone interact with her.

Aoileann's island-born father now lives on the mainland, visiting the isolated cabin once a month, occasions that are celebrated but also the cause of additional burden on Aoileann and her grandmother, because the thing (and the cabin) must be made as presentable as possible to give her father the ability to pretend things aren't as bad or as strange as they are.

As for the bed-thing, it is not as far gone as it appears. It is occasionally able to break free of its confinement, wandering abroad and inscribing arcane messages in the floorboards with an exposed finger bone. Aoileann transcribes and then erases these messages, trying to put together what her mother is attempting to convey about the reason why their family has been ostracized.

Suddenly, though, something upsets the status quo. Aoileann is a dedicated swimmer—which puts her further at odds with the other islanders, who consider swimming to be an affront to the gods of the seas—and on one of her outings she encounters first a baby crying and then the baby's mother, Rachel, an artist from the mainland who doesn't know that Aoileann is someone to avoid.

Rachel is a single mother who is trying to put together material for an exhibition intended to attract more tourists to the island. She's burning the candle at both ends (attending to the constant needs of her newborn mirrors Aoibh's demands on Aoileann) and welcomes Aoileann's friendship and help with her baby, just as Aoileann is elated to have a social interaction with anyone other than her grandmother. Their first exchanges are stilted and awkward, but Aoileann gradually learns how to be around someone else. Her feelings toward Rachel grow quickly and intensely. She wants—needs—to be part of Rachel's life.

This dark novel grows darker still, and the book becomes all the more disturbing because the language is so beautiful and poetic. Aoileann is self-educated (barely), but her thoughts are sophisticated and elevated...and terrible.