Stuart Kelly

Escape from reality: How to Survive Everything, by Ewan Morrison, reviewed

Teenage Haley and her younger brother are abducted by their father to his secret prepper retreat. But are his apocalyptic fears just paranoia?

Ewan Morrison. Credit: Alamy 
issue 27 March 2021

Ewan Morrison is an intellectually nimble writer with a penchant for provocation. His work has included the novels, Distance, Ménage and Swung, which looked at the conditions of desire, normality and love under capitalism, and a hybrid collection of essays, reportage and fiction, Tales From the Mall.

This new novel forms the final part of a loose trilogy, which is concerned with various forms of eccentric utopias. Close Your Eyes involved a spiritual commune with strict rules; Nina X was an uplifting book about a young woman freed from a Maoist cult and bemused by modernity. How to Survive Everything is narrated by teenage Haley, who has been abducted, along with her brother, by her father, a man convinced that a pandemic is imminent and who has made his own ‘prepper’ hidden retreat.

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