A mother kayaks into an ice-filled ocean, never to be seen by her family again. A woman takes to the sea fearing she carries the curse of death should she set foot on land. A man is freed from prison and creates a town beyond the forest he gazed at from the window of his cell. A chest believed to be full of treasure sits at the end of a jetty, the key to its lock rusting as the townsfolk ignore it.

Utterly original yet rich with an atmosphere of fairytale and fable, Finegan Kruckemeyer’s The End and Everything Before It unfolds in a tiny world embedded within our own. Told over the course of two centuries and bounded by sea, this is a story made up of small episodes pieced together like a patchwork quilt – a series of tales that fit together to form an epic.

The world Kruckemeyer has created is contained on an island and as the stories unfold, we recognise various elements as they change over time. High on a hill overlooking the town sits a building that begins as a prison, then becomes a hospital, an immigration facility and a juvenile home before its final incarnation. The town that grows between the forest and the jetty provides a home to a fascinating constellation of characters.

Chapter follows chapter without chronology, but we are given clues to where each of these pieces fit within the larger pattern. A house in the dunes, a jetty jutting into the sea, a bookshop, coins, trees, birds and nests – with each small episode of tragedy or whimsy Kruckemeyer is gently reminding us that everything is connected. We are all part of an ecosystem. A tug on a thread in one story and the ramifications are felt in another.

While these small stories all contain many of the elements of fable – orphans and evildoers, treasure and trickery, love and loss  – this is unquestionably a work of sophisticated literary fiction. Swerving between points of view and tenses, reality and magical realism, characters glide from the spotlight to the periphery as the stories unexpectedly collide then drift apart. In this world where time and story are non-linear, the island and its beautifully rendered ecosystem provide the closest thing to a constant.

The language and rhythm of The End and Everything Before It is gorgeous in its unadorned lyricism, Kruckemeyer’s style of wisdom cocooned in deceptive simplicity evoking memories of bedtime storytelling. One can’t help but pause after each chapter, allowing space for the language and meaning to work its magic.

In a world full of grim realities and dire predictions, this book is a balm ­– a surprising evocation of the power of stories and the deep-seated need for community between humans and connection with the non-human world.

While the evolution of the fable over the centuries has seen the disappearance of the grisly justice of Grimm and Perrault in favour of Disney-style resolutions, Kruckemeyer has put his stamp on this form, artfully injecting his trademark optimism with a dose of realism. As one of his more villainous characters muses: “… a life is a chaptered thing and some of those chapters are good and some are terrible. But soon you turn a page and find a new first word, a new season, the earth reset.”

The End and Everything Before It, by Finegan Kruckemeyer is published by Text. Kruckemeyer’s numerous plays include Hibernation, presented by State Theatre Company SA in 2021.

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