All the Water in the World

A Novel

By: Eiren Caffall

Narrated by: Eunice Wong

In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

"Eunice Wong narrates the band of survivors with tenderness while also conveying their gritty determination as they seek a new life in a world forever altered by climate change”—Library Journal

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most – love and work, community and knowledge – will survive.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

As the world drowns

A slow burn story of people, who've become a family, sheltering in the American Museum of Natural History in NYC as the water around the world rose; and their lives as they manage one crisis after another. It's full of loss, and love, and hope.
Loosley scifi, as post-apocalyptic stories about people living through climate change falls in that category, but I prefer the genre name clifi, as a subset of speculative fiction.

The narrator was superb.

Poignant and Relevant

A beautifully narrated story of the human condition and our innate will of survival. Caffall details a setting, taking readers on a journey in which they will be left, pondering if their own will would match that of the young female protagonist. A poignant book relevant in today’s world.

Rises above the genre

This post-apocolyptic story is suprisingly well written; literary science fiction. It starts off to all appearances as a generic global warming disaster, but the quality just keeps improving as you go. The story is captivating and the characters are very well drawn, but the true value is in the beautiful writing, especially in the final third.

Excellent A+

I LOVED this book. It is writtso well that it is almost poetry. I think this book could be easily made into a movie.

What a story.

This was very depressing. What a great story about the human condition. Good and bad. I will read more by this author.