Booker Prize 2026 · Audiobook Review
Written by M. John Harrison · Narrated by Russ Bain
Short, strange and thoroughly intriguing. I wasn’t always sure what was happening — I even listened to the ending again — but at under four hours, this peculiar dystopian novel kept me curious right to the end.
The Story
This is a difficult book to describe without either giving too much away or pretending I understood rather more than I did.
Harrison gives us a strange, unsettling world in which reality never feels entirely secure. There are fascinating ideas here, and I was intrigued enough to keep trying to work out exactly what was happening and what it all meant.
One sequence in particular — involving repeated iterations of essentially the same scene — stayed with me. It was clever, disorientating and rather effective, although it did nothing to make me feel more certain that I had a firm grip on proceedings.
I actually went back and listened to the ending again.
Did that clear everything up?
Not really.
But unlike a book that simply loses me, The End of Everything made me want to go back and try again. That counts for quite a lot.
The Narrator
Russ Bain does a very good job with material that could easily have become impenetrable in audio.
His delivery is controlled and understated, which suits Harrison’s strange world particularly well. He doesn’t try to explain the book through performance or impose unnecessary drama on it; he lets the uncertainty remain uncertain.
I thought he was pretty good — and, importantly, the narration helped me stay with a story that was already asking quite a lot of its listener.
The Waffleometer
This is where The End of Everything has a considerable advantage.
At around 3 hours 50 minutes, there’s simply not much opportunity for it to hang around.
That doesn’t mean it’s straightforward. Far from it. Harrison can pack a remarkable amount of uncertainty into a very small space.
But complexity isn’t necessarily waffle.
This is a short, concentrated novel that left me scratching my head rather than checking my watch.
Scores
Story & Writing: 4 / 5
Narration: 4 / 5
Waffleometer: 2 / 5 (lower is better)
The Verdict
The End of Everything is strange, unsettling and not always easy to follow — but I found it genuinely intriguing.
There were moments when I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, and even listening to the ending for a second time didn’t provide all the answers I was looking for.
Oddly, that didn’t particularly annoy me.
The difference was that I wanted to understand it.
That curiosity carried me through the audiobook and stayed with me afterwards, which perhaps explains why I’m not surprised it eventually made the Booker shortlist.
Short, peculiar and thought-provoking.
I may not have understood everything about The End of Everything — but I enjoyed trying.