‘Natasha Bell tests how far reality can bend with total control. This is a mesmerising, fiercely intelligent book. I loved it.’

Celia Silvani, author of Just Between Mothers

Book blurb

Author Harry is divorced, depressed, out of contract and unsure what she wants to do with the rest of her life. She invents a character Natalie – a braver, bolder version of herself – whom she begins channelling in small ways in her own life.

A metafictional tour de force, Maybe the World Will End So We Won’t Have To is a finely crafted literary autofiction about identity, sexuality and the work that goes into writing a novel. Brilliantly queer and feminist, and by turns funny and dark, it leaves us questioning the practice and ethics of being a writer.

My thoughts

Natasha Bell has created Harry, an author and teaches creative writing, who is awaiting her divorce from Louise to be finalised. Harry lives with Ellen, an artist who builds perfect models of celebreties and their homes, in a houseshare where Harry also rents the basement as her writing room. 

Should I Give Up, Or Should I just Keep Chasing Pavements? ADELE

Harry is writing her third book. The first one is published and the second book is soon o be published. Her agent, Dana, is eagerly awaiting something from the third book that she can take to the publishing world. Harry is struggling, she puts off writing because she has little idea of what to write. Is it writer’s block? Is she just being lazy? Is she a fraud who has simply been lucky? Harry avoids promising anything, tries to ignore or puts off answering emails, changes the subject when they meet giving lame responses. 

It was just like a movie, It was just like a song ADELE

The book opens with Harry returning home from the London Review Bookshop on the top deck of the 172 bus she comes up with ‘the most genius project’ and scribbles her thoughts into her faux moleskin notebook. This is it. The project that will bring the accolades and rewards to Harry. What is this genius idea? She will write about herself except as a character. So begins the crazy world of Natalie, Harry’s alter ego, her fictionalised self but also of Harry’s own real life. So begins a stream-of-concious-like whirlwind of a story that will have your head exploding as you hop from the real world to the fictional, from Harry’s mind to Natalie’s life on the page, from Harry’s life to Natalies life. Much as a reaction to Harry’s hopes, desires and guilts. 

We found love right where we are THINKING OUT LOUD, ED SHEERAN

Its a fascinating, brilliant, funny and absolutley heart, gut wrenching story that leaves you stunned as you speed through Harry’s life and mind. Harry’s family, Ellen’s family. How Harry’s divorce finally brings understanding. The simple things that make love. The complications that make us do stupid things. How we react and deal with devastating news (but really the end of Chapter six, do you authors really…!?!). That Harry is really quite successful even when she self doubts and this does seem to be a real trait of writers the thing that grounds them, perhaps, just in case nothing else transpires. Harry’s forray with The Fates was a worrying divertion which I was grateful went the way it did. Harry’s drinking almost flies under the radar and yet is there in plain sight. Bryn’s, Harry’s longleft behind schoolfriend, life is exposed when her mother is arrested for murder and even that is not necessarily as it really is. The fire that destroys so much yet from it a gift from mother to daughter that pulls Harry up and shows her what she has, what she might always have and then the heartwrenching, awful final days in the hospital when Harry is not only terrified, overwhelmed by fear and worry but is reduced to a footnote when it comes to being next of kin even though she and Ellen live together are partners but not actually married. Really in the 21 Century? It insults those who have perfectly real, loving relationships and probably know more about a person than those who come along and take over and that the hospital allows it, imposes it. Oh, the importance of making some form of legal declaration especially between same sex couples but not only them. There is so much that this book takes on – for writer, reader – and does immensly well.

It Matters How This Ends ADELE

You might be forgiven if you come to page 230ish to find ‘Stolen & Borrowed’ (a great source of references) followed by ‘Acknowledgements’ and you think that’s it but then you will find The Last Word do read it all it’s a cracking discussion on what an author leaves behind, how those parts might feel and is a wonderfully funny, a little dark perhaps, yet fitting completion. Not one you or I might want for all the characters but then life isn’t always happy ever after and an author has the right to do what they want with their imagination, their words. 

It was a sometimes strange, mindblowing read but well worth it and a book that I loved, not necessarily all of it but that’s something I just have to suck up because well or maybe I should imagine all the endings that I would like, you know the author will never know! Will she?

Hello from the other side ADELE

Note: The quotes because while I was writing this I was listening to Adele and others and somehow the angst, the love, the passion just seemed to fit. But you can ignore all of that.

Thanks

Huge thanks to Will Dady at Renard Press for an ARC of Maybe The World Will End So We Won’t Have To by Natasha Bell to read and share my thoughts on.

Information

Published: Renard Press | 1st September 2026 | Paperback £10 | ISBN: 978-1-80447-198-2 | 256 pp

Buy: Renard Press | Bookshop.org (affiliate link) | Hive | Amazon | Your local bookshop | Your local library

Author

Natasha Bell is an author and researcher. Her novels This Nowhere Place (2021) and His Perfect Wife (2018) are published by Penguin. She lived and studied in York and Chicago in her twenties, then moved to London for her thirties, where she completed an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths. She teaches novel-writing for Faber Academy, City Lit and Jericho Writers, and lives in Southwark with her wife and son.