Best friends exploring the Louvre in Paris find themselves in a time loop searching for answers in this “exhilarating” novel “for fans of Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind” (The Millions).
“What do you get when you take Groundhog Day, add a dash of the apocalypse, a little French obsession, and mix in female friendship and romantic entanglement? This firecracker of a book.” –Good Housekeeping
Bertie and Kate have been best friends since high school. Bertie is a semi-failed cartoonist, working for a prominent Silicon Valley tech firm. Her job depresses her, but not as much as the fact that Kate has recently decided to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
When Bertie’s attempts to make Kate stay fail, she suggests the next-best thing: a trip to Paris that will hopefully distract the duo from their upcoming separation. The vacation is also a sort of last hurrah, coming during a ceasefire in a series of escalating world conflicts.
When a mysterious stranger offers them a private tour of the Louvre, the women find themselves alone in the museum where nothing is quite as it seems. Caught up in a day that keeps repeating itself, the two are eventually separated, and Bertie is faced with a mystery that threatens to derail everything. A heartfelt ode to friendship and self-discovery, The End of the World House is a charming and thought-provoking novel exploring relationships, art, and the choices which make all the difference.
Genre: Mystery
“What do you get when you take Groundhog Day, add a dash of the apocalypse, a little French obsession, and mix in female friendship and romantic entanglement? This firecracker of a book.” –Good Housekeeping
Bertie and Kate have been best friends since high school. Bertie is a semi-failed cartoonist, working for a prominent Silicon Valley tech firm. Her job depresses her, but not as much as the fact that Kate has recently decided to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
When Bertie’s attempts to make Kate stay fail, she suggests the next-best thing: a trip to Paris that will hopefully distract the duo from their upcoming separation. The vacation is also a sort of last hurrah, coming during a ceasefire in a series of escalating world conflicts.
When a mysterious stranger offers them a private tour of the Louvre, the women find themselves alone in the museum where nothing is quite as it seems. Caught up in a day that keeps repeating itself, the two are eventually separated, and Bertie is faced with a mystery that threatens to derail everything. A heartfelt ode to friendship and self-discovery, The End of the World House is a charming and thought-provoking novel exploring relationships, art, and the choices which make all the difference.
Genre: Mystery
Praise for this book
"Adrienne Celt's new novel depicts a fraying world (climate crisis, political violence, social upheaval) that's frighteningly recognizable. It's a timely novel, as well as one that has great fun exploring what time itself is. Yet End of the World House asks a question that's timeless: how do we make a meaningful life?" - Rumaan Alam
"Adrienne Celt has crafted something brilliant with END OF THE WORLD HOUSE. This book is an intoxicating mix of beauty, art, and mystery. Celt writes about the tangled threads of close friendship with tremendous skill and a wild amount of heart. It's a novel that's undeniably funny, unafraid to look at the messy ways we unwittingly complicate our lives as well as the lives of the people closest to us. A compelling look at intimacy and its myriad vulnerabilities, END OF THE WORLD HOUSE is a stunner." - Kristen Arnett
"Adrienne Celt's End of the World House brilliantly captures our swelling fears of the world we live in today, but it's way more than that. It's also a severely smart and surreal examination of friendship and capitalism that is both terrifying and beautiful and strikes deeply at readers' emotions. I loved it." - Brandon Hobson
"Adrienne Celt's writing is such a pleasure to read--fluid, funny, and smart--that the dazzling architecture of END OF THE WORLD HOUSE almost feels like an extravagance. The story of a friendship ravaged by a ruined world, with shades of both RUSSIAN DOLL and Rumaan Alam's LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND, this is both a page turner and a shrewd examination of intimacy and survival." - Kristen Iskandrian
"In this new novel from the ever-ingenious Adrienne Celt, a couple of close friends are visiting the Louvre when they find that the world as they've known it has ended. Marvelously imaginative and terrifyingly plausible, a time-bending funhouse riddled with rabbit holes, End of the World House is slippery and uncanny and so very compelling." - R O Kwon
"A phantasmagoric thrill ride, Adrienne Celt's End of The World House is a story of apocalypse and art, but also of friendship and love and fighting for a sense of one's self in the face of modern day alienation and precarity. I love this book for the way it reconsiders how time and space function within novels, how it made me think about memory and art-making, and also, for its acuity and its heart." - Lynn Steger Strong
"Reading Adrienne Celt is like being granted access to a secret kingdom, another layer of reality you didn't know existed. Even mundane objects shimmer strangely under the intensity of her gaze. Haunted, romantic, unexpectedly playful, and un-put-down-able, END OF THE WORLD HOUSE will change the way you think about the immortality of art, free will, the future and the past. Adrienne Celt is brilliant and I want to read everything she ever writes." - Rufi Thorpe
"Adrienne Celt has crafted something brilliant with END OF THE WORLD HOUSE. This book is an intoxicating mix of beauty, art, and mystery. Celt writes about the tangled threads of close friendship with tremendous skill and a wild amount of heart. It's a novel that's undeniably funny, unafraid to look at the messy ways we unwittingly complicate our lives as well as the lives of the people closest to us. A compelling look at intimacy and its myriad vulnerabilities, END OF THE WORLD HOUSE is a stunner." - Kristen Arnett
"Adrienne Celt's End of the World House brilliantly captures our swelling fears of the world we live in today, but it's way more than that. It's also a severely smart and surreal examination of friendship and capitalism that is both terrifying and beautiful and strikes deeply at readers' emotions. I loved it." - Brandon Hobson
"Adrienne Celt's writing is such a pleasure to read--fluid, funny, and smart--that the dazzling architecture of END OF THE WORLD HOUSE almost feels like an extravagance. The story of a friendship ravaged by a ruined world, with shades of both RUSSIAN DOLL and Rumaan Alam's LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND, this is both a page turner and a shrewd examination of intimacy and survival." - Kristen Iskandrian
"In this new novel from the ever-ingenious Adrienne Celt, a couple of close friends are visiting the Louvre when they find that the world as they've known it has ended. Marvelously imaginative and terrifyingly plausible, a time-bending funhouse riddled with rabbit holes, End of the World House is slippery and uncanny and so very compelling." - R O Kwon
"A phantasmagoric thrill ride, Adrienne Celt's End of The World House is a story of apocalypse and art, but also of friendship and love and fighting for a sense of one's self in the face of modern day alienation and precarity. I love this book for the way it reconsiders how time and space function within novels, how it made me think about memory and art-making, and also, for its acuity and its heart." - Lynn Steger Strong
"Reading Adrienne Celt is like being granted access to a secret kingdom, another layer of reality you didn't know existed. Even mundane objects shimmer strangely under the intensity of her gaze. Haunted, romantic, unexpectedly playful, and un-put-down-able, END OF THE WORLD HOUSE will change the way you think about the immortality of art, free will, the future and the past. Adrienne Celt is brilliant and I want to read everything she ever writes." - Rufi Thorpe
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