I don't usually review novels. Furthermore, it's generally not a good idea to write on the spur of the moment-but the damage is already done, as this article demonstrates. I'm writing these lines a few hours after finishing "Flood" by Stephen Markley (Einaudi, 2024), a novel that deeply affected me and which I can only recommend. As I learn from those who understand literature better than I do, Markley is part of a new generation of American writers who intend to forge a very clear pact with the reader: elaborate plots that aren't afraid to unfold at length, in-depth exploration of characters and their relationships, and an implicit demand for the reader's commitment to following the plot and those relationships with the promise that in the end, everything will add up. In other words, no flights of fancy, no vague endings, but a confident return to realism. I also highly recommend Markley's first book, "Ohio" (first published in 2020), a vivid and stark portrait of small-town America, where four characters intersect and tell part of a larger story from their own perspectives. The first character is initially under the influence of psychotropic substances, so his narrative is a bit confusing, but just stick with it for the first 50 to 80 pages and everything will become clear.
"The Flood" is her second novel: a massive tome of over 1,200 pages that aims to chronicle the world affected by global warming over a period of time spanning approximately 2013 to 2045. Be warned, however: these aren't the facile catastrophes we've become accustomed to in Hollywood (which I regularly watch because I have a taste for trash). Markley translates scientific predictions into narrative form, as if they had already happened. From this perspective, "Diluvio" isn't a dystopian or apocalyptic novel; on the contrary, it's a profoundly realistic novel, drawing (as far as I can tell) on solid research in various fields. Here too, I recommend getting past the first ten pages dedicated to clathrates: it may seem like a strange start, but then everything becomes clear. This is the beauty of the novel: everything holds together, supported by a perspective that's as realistic as possible, never moralistic, always plural, because the characters are plural (in terms of age, gender, cultural background, social class, etc.), their tones are varied (perplexed, enthusiastic, militant, at the mercy of events, etc.), and their choices. Markley avoids fetishes, holy pictures, and easy, reassuring solutions, aware that things don't go as hoped (and when will they ever go?), that history, to quote Malatesta, "has no libretto." Markley's dispassionate and at times disenchanted gaze leads him to imagine a political evolution profoundly influenced by the impact of artificial intelligence and polarized by the shocking effects of global warming (floods, inundations, fires...), an evolution that, frankly, didn't strike me as far-fetched. The novel was published in 2022: Markley imagines that Trump hasn't won the Republican primaries and therefore hasn't obtained a second term, but that doesn't mean things will go well, given that at a certain point we find Anders Breivik (the perpetrator of the 2011 Utoya massacre) as president of Norway. Mind-blowing? Considering that words like deportation ("remigration") are now part of the political debate, Breivik as president doesn't (unfortunately) seem such an absurd hypothesis.
Despite its size, the book is a quick and easy read, thanks in my opinion to the clever and original use of different narrative formats (interviews, newspaper articles, reports, etc.) to tell parts of the story and thus avoid being too didactic. Among the literary references, I would definitely mention Stephen King's "The Stand" (referenced several times by the characters in "The Flood"). Markley's novel entertained me, made me think (and occasionally even pissed me off), but once I finished it, I couldn't help but think that I had before me a classic that recounts this "barbaric and alien age," as Markley writes (p. 640), in which the impossible seems to happen just around the corner. It's not an anarchist book, let's be clear, but it's a book that, in my opinion, speaks volumes to those who want to change the world we live in, aware that power will always seek to screw over the least privileged-an awareness that one of the characters in "The Flood," Keeper, is well aware of. From right-wing paramilitary groups, new fundamentalist religions, mass profiling for political and commercial purposes, occupations, disasters, and democratic governments ready to forget their vaunted constitutional principles in favor of the worst authoritarian solutions, "The Flood" recounts, without embellishment, complacency, or morbidity, what could happen to "this magnificent and ancient world" (p. 1293) in which we have been fortunate enough to live.
D.B.
https://umanitanova.org/un-diluvio-di-pagine-da-leggere/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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