The Finite by Kit Power

Publisher – Black Shuck Books

Published – Out Now

Price – £7.99 paperback £0.99 Kindle eBook

“The Finite started as a dream; an image, really, on the edge of waking. My daughter and I, joining a stream of people walking past our house. We were marching together, and I saw that many of those behind us were sick, and struggling, and then I looked to the horizon and saw the mushroom cloud. I remember a wave of perfect horror and despair washing over me; the sure and certain knowledge that our march was doomed, as were we.The image didn’t make it into the story, but the feeling did. King instructs us to write about what scares us. In The Finite, I wrote about the worst thing I can imagine; my own childhood nightmare, resurrected and visited on my kid.”

The end of the world is a grim thought at the best of times. How would you face the end of days and who would you be with? One of the hardest situations that could be imagined if how would this happen with a young child. In Kit Power’s touching yet tragic The Infinite; in this novella we meet a father and daughter who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and have to then deal with the consequences.

Rob is awoken in the middle of the night by his young daughter Charley for a sore foot. While helping her back to sleep there is suddenly a huge light from the direction of London and then the windows shatter and a huge cloud of dust covers them both. The lights go out and Rob works out he and his child have been in the way of a nuclear blast and fallout. Recovering from the shock Rob tries to navigate what to do next as he suspects that the dose that they’ve encountered that night may be too high to survive. In a rapidly deserted town Rob tries to cerate a sense of normality as their world is increasingly shattered.

The key to this story is the perfectly realistic parent child relationship we see across the story. Even for someone like me with no parental instincts at all you recognise the dynamic of love, frustration, joy and stress a child can create moment to moment. Watching a child try to make sense of the world can be both annoying as hell or amazing to watch as is the constant rush to try to entertain them. But there is also the desire to protect your kid from any moment of pain or harm. Power here makes us experience all these little scenes as the days pass and it feels a totally true relationship just in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

I’m going to get my one slight issue with the story out of the way before I explain why I think this a read you should seek out. A big turning point of the story is Rob deciding that he and Charley have taken a fatal dose and he ignores the chance of rescue. Without that choice the rest of the story would wrap up really quickly but it doesn’t quite feel that this was the most reasonable choice to make (Rob is not a medical professional) but as we see Rob is a tormented figure in a difficult situation and this could have been just a reaction to the stress of the moment. I read what follows as a man in severe stress making a tough choice, but you may choose otherwise.

If though you can then accept that I find this a Wyndham like trip into a quiet apocalypse with plenty to reward the reader. Power avoids going for the obvious all people are cruel approach and there are moments of kindness, comedy and solidarity that mean even in the bleakest of situations there is some light from humanity. There are also some people who you don’t want to cross paths with who can snuff it all out with acts of selfishness. These small interludes as the place gets quieter and quieter give the tale some tension and a reminder that life always wants to carry on but as we see more dead animals and supplies run low, we can hear a ticking clock getting steadily louder and louder.

The structure of the tale is another highlight with initially chapters comprising Rob’s diary entries that helpfully gives us Rob’s backstory and emotional state. We find a man who was already suffering and recovering from anxiety (and Power makes us actually understand that condition in a really well delivered monologue) but now finds himself having to be the full-time parent as his partner was in London on the night of the blast. He’s now having to mask all of this from Charley and also process the enormity of what has happened to his old hometown. He also has to deal with his own fears as a parent that he poorer of the couple; he’s not the fun one, he can’t make it easy and will let Charley down. Again, the capturing od the darker side of being a parent that so many parents share is well captured pulling us into the story to invest in what happens to the two of them

In the final section of the story, we move from Rob’s written thoughts to actually hearing the duo’s voices on a day-to-day basis as they both begin to feel the effects of the blast. This was one of the hardest sections to read as the situation becomes ever clearer and taking away Rob’s creative words and flow replacing them with the more naked voice of the two characters and their final chats made everything starker and more hard-hitting.

This novella is a fascinating mix of a cold bleak situation ending in tragedy and also one that captures a warm loving relationship. The two forces in the story complement each other but like all laws of entropy there will always be one winner. Power’s use of voice and character are the standouts of the tale and made this a memorable and entrancing read. I must though warn that those readers who dislike scenes of children in dangerous situations that this may be a little too hard a read but  otherwise it’s a book I think well deserves your attention.