The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff

This isn’t one of my 25 Books in 25 Days – not at the page count the Sherriff weighs in at! – but I wanted to add it to my participation in Jessie’s Persephone Readathon. And I read it a couple of weeks ago – my third Sherriff, but certainly not my last.

The Hopkins Manuscript (1939) isn’t my usual fare, inasmuch as it is science fiction – not a genre I usually rush towards. But I had previously read and loved a couple of his other books published by Persephone, The Fortnight in September and Greengates, and so I was encouraged to pick up my copy of this one. It certainly didn’t disappoint. The premise is that the moon is going to hit the earth – but that really is just the premise for a character study.

There is a short (fake) preface letting us know that this manuscript has been unearthed, centuries after the events of the novel – and apparently almost all vestiges of the UK have long gone. Experts comb the world to find any evidence of what that civilisation might have been like – and this manuscript is by far the longest discovered. It is called the Hopkins manuscript because it was written by one Edgar Hopkins – and he takes over the story once the novel proper starts. This is, I suppose, his diary.

Hopkins is interested in astronomy and part of the Lunar Society – which is where he is first warned that the moon is likely to hit the earth. In a state of shock, but sworn to secrecy, he heads back to his normal life. And that life is quite a lonely one. He lives alone, except for staff and the poultry that he breeds in a mildly obsessive way, and seems to regard everybody else in his small village (Beadle) as a yokel and idiot. He often reflects that none of them would understand the calamity coming, and that he has nobody of sense to talk with. In short, Hopkins is not the most appealing narrator at the start – much as the gentleman at the centre of Greengates is a little obstreperous as things kick off.

To be honest, this first section of the novel could have done with a bit of editing. We know something seismic is going to happen, and it’s important to set up the world that will be disrupted, but I got a bit impatient waiting for the moon to do its thing.

But eventually, of course, it does. By now the world has been told what will happen – or at least the UK, because Hopkins doesn’t really seem to know that the rest of the world exists, at this point. Bunkers have been built, and prayers said. Most charmingly, Hopkins has befriended a small family who live across the valley from him – a Colonel Parker and his young nephew Robin and niece Pat. These are the educated society Hopkins has wanted (though apparently without wandering far to find it), and there are some touching scenes where Hopkins’ paternal side emerges – and where he watches their lights across the valley, taking comfort from it.

But comfort cannot last. The moon arrives. The world is not destroyed, but everything changes – and Hopkins finds himself living a far different life in a semi-ruined Beadle, growing closer to Robin and Pat, but increasingly isolated from everything else.

Sherriff writes the section of the moon’s landing so brilliantly – it is very tense, while still intensely human. The aftermath is similarly well told, and the central section of the novel was definitely the bit I enjoyed most. He draws the new familial relationships beautifully, and Hopkins gradually becomes a much more likeable character – each step and shade of his character changing being done slowly and believably.

But this is not the end. The final section of the novel looks at how different countries start feuding over the moon and its apparent economic qualities – all seen from the distant perspective of Hopkins. Humanity suffers at the hands of nations’ leaders’ greed and nationalism. Published in 1939, it certainly had relevance to the Second World War – but it felt extremely relevant to Brexit and Trump and far-right parties gaining ascendance across Europe today. Some evils only change their form, it seems.

If the other Sherriff novels I’ve read have felt very much about individual groups of people, with only faint links to class or other wider issues, this one is much more a state-of-the-nation type novel. While still, of course, keeping humanity at its core. I daresay the science of what would happen if the moon did start moving is all flawed, but that certainly doesn’t bother me – and doesn’t remotely affect whether or not this is an impactful novel.

I still prefer his other books, perhaps because this one did feel like it could lose 100 pages without any detriment – but this is still wonderful, and I’m keen to see what else Sherriff has written (and fingers crossed that Persephone publish more of it!)