I chose this book after reading this review (thanks, anana!). I have to say I agree with anana’s general perspective that this book is ambitious and mostly successful. What drew me in was the comparison to Station Eleven, which I loved. If you’re interested in literary fiction about climate change and the potential disasters it might bring to Earth as we know it, you’ll likely enjoy this novel.
The structure relies on the story of a single family, told across two hundred years – from the plains of Kansas in 1873, to Mars in 2073. In 1873, Samson escapes his native Ireland and an abusive father. The story is about his descendants, some of whom share his uncanny visions of the future (vague images of deserts, boots, and the sense that they know everything before it happens). Some also share something else, quite possibly some inherited tendency towards – well, not exactly violence, but something hard, selfish – something turned away from community. And yet, Samson’s descendants are ultimately quite preoccupied with the concept and formation of communities.
As we bounce through time, we get snippets of the story moving in both directions – some sections feel like origin stories for character’s we have already spent time with. I was a little frustrated by the concept of time, and I spent too much time trying to sort out the timelines when I realized certain relationships seemed likely, only to have those relationships confirmed but ALSO the oddities of the timeline confirmed (which felt more frustrating than satisfying). In a set up like this, with so many characters and allusions to dramatic events over time, I appreciated that the author took the time to give us more or less sufficient information and follow up, including a brief interlude with a minor character that underscored the impact of this hereditary isolation in the Samson genetic code.
In this version of the Earth, the storms of 2017 grow stronger and every coastline around the world shrinks (grows? The water moves inland). Eventually by 2073, the Earth is a flooded mess, with a few communities in existence but a staggering loss of anything we might consider to be normal. Some parts of the novel (mostly snippets of dialogue here and there) felt a little overly dramatic, but honestly the idea that in 50 years much of our Earth will be uninhabitable in the ways we are currently living seems, sadly, not outside the realm of possibility.
I wouldn’t have wanted this book to be longer, and yet I felt there was just a bit too much left unsaid in this novel. Maybe there were just too many ideas being thrown out there – too many characters, too many Big Ideas – that in the end, I felt I hadn’t really settled into it as much as I would have liked. Since this was a debut novel, I will certainly be on the lookout for more by Erin Swan.