Emma watched her mother's kayak disappear among icebergs in the Arctic Sea. Six years later, her brother, who had not spoken since their mother was lost, warns Emma of the curse of death that she brought to anyone who looked on her face—before tragedy befalls him too.

Emma consigns herself to a solitary life at sea, where she can do no more harm. After years alone, she is mysteriously drawn to land. And she docks at an island, afraid of what her arrival might mean for the welcoming man and his daughter waving from the jetty.

But who knows where our stories begin and end or how they are entwined? Who knows whether now, on the island, she begins a new tale—or takes a role in a story that began generations ago with a feast in the forest, or a chest of gold coins plunged into the sea, or an orphan in a bookshop beguiled by an elusive and troubled woman?

Finegan Kruckemeyer's astonishing debut, The End and Everything Before It, is a sweeping, joyous novel about love, loss and the power of stories—an uplifting journey into our deepest humanity.

Finegan Kruckemeyer was born in Ireland and now lives in Adelaide. He is an award-winning playwright, whose works have been performed on six continents and in eight languages. The End and Everything Before It is his first novel.

'A profoundly tragicomic philosophy of life...Stories of death, love and grief collide in this book.' Age

'A book that is as much a puzzle as it is a novel...[Explores] the deeper question of where do stories start and where do stories end? What is a story and when can we start to look at it as an entity? Puts tiles into a mosaic that creates a picture...A beautiful concept, a beautiful preoccupation.' ABC Radio Melbourne Evenings, David Astle

'A startlingly optimistic work, a fable about making families and communities, about the practices that bring people together as the world wrenches them apart.' Guardian

'This magical book honours the miracle of how people make people who become precious just to their chosen kin, just for a little while—before life continues on and sweeps us all along in its wake. It's filled with a gentle acknowledgement of how we each suffer alone, but is also suffused with hope at how even the worst kinds of grief can be survived through loving connections with others. Bursting with wisdom and poetry, this novel reminds us that storytelling is a moral force—and a salve to every lost soul.' Ceridwen Dovey