Who Would You Spend the End of the World With? A Review of All the Ends of the World by Andrea Chapela
Andrea Chapela's All the Ends of the World redefines survival in a fractured future
Divided into three parts and driven by a trio of protagonists—Manu, Susana, and Angélica—All the Ends of the World (Penguin Random House, 2025) by Andrea Chapela is a meticulously structured work of fiction that draws on the etymological, ethical, scientific, and, above all, emotional explorations of younger generations to craft a powerful narrative where nothing can be taken for granted until the final page.
Born in Mexico City in 1990, Chapela trained as a chemist. She holds an MFA in Spanish Creative Writing from the University of Iowa and a master's degree in Japanese Studies from El Colegio de México. Her published works include Ansibles, Profilers, and Other Machines of Wit (Almadía, 2020), A Year in Room Service (UDG, 2019), and Degrees of Myopia (Tierra Adentro, 2019). Among her accolades are the Gilberto Owen National Short Story Award and the Juan José Arreola National Literature Prize, and her writing has been translated into English, French, and Italian.
Set in a plausible near future where the world has endured severe climate upheaval, the first act unfolds in Madrid, a city gripped by extreme temperatures that force its residents into prolonged shelter. Angélica, a Mexican woman and the daughter of a tech mogul who controls the production and sale of purified water, has traveled there for a sabbatical year to study theater. This pause in her life opens unexpected windows of possibility—most notably, her encounter with the novel's other two leads. Tension mounts when Angélica receives a message from immigration authorities: a one-way ticket back to her home country aboard the Hyper.
"Who would you spend the end of the world with?" someone asks on page 80 of this book, where apocalypse is no abstract concept but a looming reality. During one of these climate emergencies, Angie forges a bond with her neighbors, Susana and Manu. But what to call this connection? Should it even be named? Let no one be fooled: what unfolds is neither platonic love nor a romantic triangle, but something far subtler and more intricate.
While Susana is the group's writer, it soon becomes clear that Angélica is the one most inclined to ponder the weight and meaning of words. Since the story is told through her perspective, her reflective nature lends the prose an almost essayistic texture at times—a quality that suits it well, deepening the narrative with the critical gaze of someone who examines the world with discernment. "We don't all experience anger or sadness the same way," the protagonist observes, confronting us with the mystery of human communication: though words serve as meeting points, each evokes a different reality for every individual. As the narrative voice later notes, language allows us to name things, but it also boxes us in, constricts, and suffocates.
One concept that carries different meanings for the trio of Angélica, Manu, and Susana is precariousness: for the Mexican, the word signifies an existential condition, while for Susana and Manu, it is also material—physical, economic, the daily struggle of those who must work to survive. In this way, All the Ends of the World doubles as a sharp chronicle of the strategies young people deploy to confront the precarity imposed by a world that fails to deliver on its promises, and as a tender emotional logbook of a young woman learning to articulate what she feels in a world that gradually unfolds through her relationship with language.
Because it is words—and the concepts we often assume to be immutable, like love, friendship, and family—that demand redefinition when they no longer capture reality. Seen this way, the collapse of old meanings is also an end to the world as we know it, yet it may herald the birth of another. A case in point appears on page 97, where Angélica questions whether the traditional model of couples forming families remains desirable—or even possible. And though the story unfolds in a futuristic setting, it's impossible not to draw parallels with the complex world we inhabit today.
In the second part of the novel, the setting shifts dramatically: the world's balance has been irreparably shattered. From her father's ranch, where she is confined with a small group of survivors, Angélica has no idea what the situation is like in other parts of the planet—or whether anyone else has made it. She doesn't even know what caused the collapse. All she knows is that the apocalypse began with an accident in the Hyper and that the climate was thrown into chaos.
Yet it is in the third act of the novel that readers must rethink everything they've read. I won't reveal more of the plot to avoid spoiling the experience, but I will say this: the book itself proves that just as language can constrain, trap, and stifle, it can also redefine, liberate, and connect.
"When writing fiction, you have to track and honor the promises you make, because in a way, you're forging a pact between writer and reader," we read on page 216. It's true: in All the Ends of the World, expectations run high in a novel that explores desire, love, and the bond between them, but also the ever-looming possibility of dismantling the known world and reinventing everything—love, family, the state, even our relationship with nature and ourselves. Fortunately, despite the ambition of this journey, Andrea Chapela keeps it all masterfully in check. By the time we reach that simulated apocalypse which is the close of a memorable book, readers finish with a sense of hope: though the novel itself warns us, placing our trust in the narrator has been worth it.
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