Termush (Faber Editions): 'A classic―stunning, dangerous, darkly beautiful' (Jeff VanderMeer)

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While the management seeks to censor bleak news, the narrator tries to find out the truth along with a few others. As things escalate, all the residents will have to make big decisions. All these details obsess me to a degree that makes me surprised and uneasy. My only consolation is that everything is still so new that what happened can neither be comprehended by reason nor has it yet been able to penetrate the subconscious. The group turns out to consist of a radiation expert, a doctor and a few volunteers, who, so far as I know, offered their services while we were still underground in the shelters. Quite naturally younger men have been preferred for this assignment. Once this route had been approved, we did all the usual tinkering of fonts, colours and iconography. I am opposed to the management’s decision to suppress the news of the four dead bodies. By doing this the management has assumed the role of a superior authority to which it has no right. It is arguable that this time the encroachment is of no great significance, that the secrecy is unimportant and may even have been dictated by consideration, but I am against this line of reasoning.

The reconnaissance men would take with them long-range microphone equipment and every morning the management would inform us what calculations and observations they had made the previous day.

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Your support changes lives. Find out how you can help us help more people by signing up for a subscription If the hotel management see themselves as a protective shield between the guests and the outside world, whenever that world is revealed as menacing, they are acting in direct contradiction of their terms of reference. To be a guarantee of help in a situation which may well turn out to be total chaos, according to the unhelpful wording of the brochure, does not mean that to conceal the true facts becomes a duty. Become a Faber Member for free and receive curated book recommendations, special competitions and exclusive discounts.

The patrol would of course be equipped with the necessary protective clothing, but the attempt to make it motorized had been abandoned. According to the last radio reports we received in the shelters the entire highway network has been destroyed. There was talk of using small scooters, but these are really better suited to shorter distances and the problem of fuel would be difficult to solve. There is of course no danger of the guests feeling secure. When the management uses this expression, it is not because they are incapable of putting themselves in the guests’ position, but because they choose simple, straightforward language, partly to reassure themselves and partly to remind us of the impersonal tone of the brochure. When all is said and done, management and guests are faced with precisely the same situation. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. I include myself in these observations, because I go about preoccupied with the coppery-green colour of the carpet, which annoys me, and the noise from the room next door which impinges on me against my will. The armchair is the only item of furniture in the room which gives me satisfaction. Even the mirror has a frame which makes it clash with the rest of the furnishings.Indeed, our new introducer Jeff VanderMeer praises Termush as ‘a classic: stunning, dangerous, darkly beautiful'. His foreword brilliantly places the novel in its literary context, arguing that the way in which Holm prioritises the ‘psychology of the holed-up survivors and the hazards of societal breakdown’ in the ‘wrong future’ bridges the genres of 1950s ‘disaster cosies’ by John Wyndham and the extravagant 1970s dystopias of J. G. Ballard. The wealthy guests are survivors who reserved their rooms long before the disaster. But despite weathering a nuclear apocalypse, their problems are only just beginning – this is the hotel at the end of the world.

One of the guests suggested that the reconnaissance men’s reports should be transmitted direct via the hotel’s loudspeaker system, and even though the suggestion was meant seriously, it aroused considerable merriment and shaking of heads. Of course the idea was in itself melodramatic, but it is important that guests should suggest alternatives that can be discussed. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean, which chilled me so profoundly, gave me my first realization of what had happened. Yet this had nothing to do with the disaster; on the contrary, this was the last place one would expect to find traces of it. The ploughed-up grounds, the washed-down cactus plants, the churned-up flower-beds, all these changes affected me less than the wholly inalterable sea. Highly recommended as a study of psychology and morality after a cataclysmic event. In the era of Covid-19, I am reminded of ultra-wealthy New Yorkers retreating to their second homes in The Hamptons, while a personal staff maintains their lavish lives. I absolutely fell in love with the more political and moral elements of this story, and found it really highlights the journey of self-discovery once everything you thought you knew about yourself is stripped away from you. We expected to find a world completely annihilated. This was what we insured ourselves against when we enrolled at Termush….We paid money to go on living in the same way that one once paid health insurance; we bought the commodity called survival, and according to all existing contracts no one has the right to take it from us or make demands upon it.”Despite the decimated exterior world, life in Termush mirrors the world before the change in many ways. A micro-community; hierarchical, featuring a management team, chairmen, guards, a doctor and the guests themselves. Our fear is no longer a fear of death but of change and mutilation. We have not thought this through and cannot talk about it, but in those moments when we are able to escape from our own personal needs the picture becomes clear to us. Despite weathering a nuclear apocalypse, their problems are only just beginning. Soon, the Management begins censoring news; disruptive guests are sedated; initial generosity towards Strangers ceases as fears of contamination and limited resources grow. But as the numbers - and desperation - of external survivors increase, they must decide what it means to forge a new moral code at the end (or beginning?) of the world …