Review: 'The Hopkins Manuscript,' by R.C. Sherriff

"The Hopkins Manuscript" is a terrific, chilling, sometimes funny novel about the end of the world. Originally published in 1939, it echoes with warnings from both world wars, but the plot focuses on a different danger — the moon, which has been knocked off its course and is now heading toward Earth.

The novel is framed as a document written in the 1930s (and rediscovered centuries later) by a man named Edgar Hopkins who is recording "the final, tragic days of London."

Hopkins is a retired schoolmaster living in an English village, devoting himself to his prize chickens and faithfully attending meetings of the British Lunar Society. It is at one of those meetings that the news of the moon's dangerous new trajectory is revealed — the moon, they are told, will make contact with Earth in seven months' time. But will it be a direct hit? A glancing blow? A near miss?

Hopkins is a delightful character — stuffy, vain, utterly self-absorbed — and it is his perspective and observations that give the book its comic relief.

R.C. Sherriff is the author of "The Fortnight in September," a beautiful between-the-wars novel also republished by Scribner. Both novels are infused with Sherriff's main themes — war, change and the stubbornness of human nature.

Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor for books at the Star Tribune. books@startribune.com

The Hopkins Manuscript
By: R.C. Sherriff.
Publisher: Scribner, 385 pages, $18.