Author(s): Rebecca Priestley

Society | Aotearoa New Zealand Non-Fiction | Read our reviews! | 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards long lists | Biography and Memoir

In the late 1980s, two teenage girls found refuge from a world of cosy conformity, sexism and the nuclear arms race in protest and punk. Then, drawn in by a promise of meaning and purpose, they cast off their punk outfits and became born-again Christians. Unsure which fate would come first - nuclear annihilation or the Second Coming of Jesus - they sought answers from end-times evangelists, scrutinising friends and family for signs of demon possession and identifying EFTPOS and barcodes as signs of a looming apocalypse. Fast forward to 2021, and Rebecca and Maz - now a science historian and an engineer - are on a road trip to the West Coast. Their journey, though full of laughter and conversation and hot pies, is haunted by the threats of climate change, conspiracy theories, and a massive overdue earthquake. End Times interweaves the stories of these two periods in Rebecca's life, both of which have at heart a sleepless fear of the end of the world. Along the way she asks: Why do people hold on to some ideas but reject others? How do you engage with someone whose beliefs are wildly different from your own? And where can we find hope when it sometimes feels as if we all live on a fault line that could rupture at any moment?

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STELLA'S REVIEW: 
Is it the end times now? Was it the end times then? What is this end times? In Rebecca Priestley’s End Times she tackles the anxiety produced by climate change and an uncertain future; her 1980s teen experience of evangelical Christianity set against the background of nuclear threat, testing in the Pacific, and the advent of electronic technology; the existential search to find your place in the world; all explored through a 2021 lens as she road trips the West Coast with her best mate Maz. As with her previous book Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica, Priestley has that knack for being deadly serious and hilariously funny, which is the perfect combination of keeping this many-headed hydra on track. For some the science will come to the fore, the details about the landscape, the rock and sediment, the sea level equations, and the Alpine fault line predictions based on facts and analysis. For others, the descriptions of the townships, empty spaces, and natural environment of the coast overlaid with pockets of history will resonate. There are also personal family histories, those stories that get passed down the generations, some backed up by passenger lists and gravestone records, while others embellished to make the patchwork we call family history. And yet, this is also a book about reconnection. For Priestley, it’s a road trip with her closest friend, in the here and now, but also a reckoning of their teenage years. From flirting with punk to raising their arms to praise, Rebecca and Maz were looking for somewhere to belong at a time when the world felt uncertain. And here they are again in 2021, a year into the pandemic — in a moment of relative calm when borders remained closed, but the isolation of lockdown was being shucked off — seeking an appreciation of these new end times. For Priestley, she’s on a mission to listen. To listen without prejudice, but not with acceptance. There are moments in her recorded conversations with miners, tourist operators, and a mayor, where she’s holding back. You see her desire to dish up the facts, but this restraint reveals better information than confrontation. She wants to work out what makes people believe in one thing over another. How they get their information, and the conclusions they draw using her own experience — her adventures in faith — as a mirror for reflection. Through these observations, there is also a personal reckoning in mid-life with her own anxiety which has peppered her teen and adult years. For both friends, it’s an opportunity to break out from their fifty-something lives, as they drive down the Coast, eat pies (there are not always vegetarian options), drink red wine, meet the locals, and catch up with old friends. There are silly moments, as there should be with close friends, as well as philosophical musings, pushing levity and concern up against each other much like the tectonic plates push against each other creating tensions and fissures. In writing, Rebecca Priestley works her way towards some answers in these end times.