The End We Start From author moved by film adaptation

Megan Hunter said it was "thrilling, magical and quite humbling" to see her novel adapted for the screen

An author whose debut novel has been turned into a film starring Jodie Comer found it "very, very moving to see my imagination taking physical form".

The End We Start From is a climate change film about a woman and her baby surviving in a submerged London.

Author Megan Hunter, from Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, visited the set twice during its filming in 2022.

It is based on her novel about early motherhood and the "contemporary reality" of climate disaster.

Jodie Comer stars as Megan Hunter's lead character, known only as Woman

Ms Hunter said there were two particular occasions when "the scene I imagined" in the book took form.

The first was entering her lead character's flat and "it really did look like the place I'd imagined".

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The other was when she turned a corner of a London street.

"And there were overturned cars and debris in the street and that was a real London street, people were taking their children to school," she said.

"To see my book come to life, with the disturbing element of seeing a street in London destroyed in that way and to seem flooded, there was something very eerie about it."

Woman experiences the devastation of climate change and flooding

The End We Start From was published in 2017.

Its inspiration began a few years earlier when Ms Hunter had her first child and wished to write about pregnancy, birth and motherhood in the first year.

Meanwhile, there was the "global context and ecological disasters, and that all came together", she said.

"That sense of the dystopian future feels more about contemporary reality and a much closer threat, unfortunately," she said.

Interest in turning the novel into a film came as a nice surprise.

Director Mahalia Belo with Comer on the film's recreation of a flooded street

Ms Hunter said: "This was very unexpected, because the book is a very slim prose-poem, a novella. It's very sparse on the page, so it might not be the kind of book that would leap into your mind as a film adaption."

Her lead character, known only as Woman, is played by Killing Eve star Comer in the film. It also features Joel Fry as her partner, plus Benedict Cumberbatch, Katherine Waterston and Gina McKee.

Ms Hunter added the film was "very much its own creation - the vision of a wonderful director, Mahalia Belo, and adapted by an amazing writer, Alice Birch".

"There are things the film can do that the book can't do, such as the visual grandeur and beauty - that you can't see in the book," she said.

The End We Start From opened in UK cinemas on Friday.