The United States and the entire planet are experiencing increasingly violent weather conditions: super typhoons with winds of 300 km/h, mega forest fires like The Domino devastating the northern half of Los Angeles, gigantic floods like the great flood of the east (the capital Washington DC, devastated, will be moved to Cleveland) and temperatures that go crazy (20 degrees in February, 50 in summer and still 30-40 in autumn). The human toll of natural disasters is enormous.
Two women in the White House
Stephen Markley also takes care of the political decor. After the Obama-Trump-Biden years, two women reach the White House, a Democrat in 2024, a Republican in 2028, and the return of a Democrat, liberticide, in 2032. The year 2036 sees the rise of an ultra-conservative and evangelical pastor, but forced to give up his place to his vice-president on the Republican ticket. Each government is cautious or even apathetic in its fight against global warming, there is little consensus on the subject and the political class is torn apart, torn between its extremisms and the various lobbyists, oil or environmentalists.
Two climate and security laws – described in detail, fiercely negotiated and debated, and publicized – are also like two heroines of the novel. They establish a set of new taxes and climate taxes, called the “electric collar,” but flanked by a sort of ultra-authoritarian and intrusive Patriot Act. Environmental activism is also trying to dictate the legislative tone, in a pacifist or ecoterrorist manner. A huge demonstration on the National Mall in Washington followed by a three-month occupation around the Capitol ended in a riot and government repression that left nearly 800 dead. At the same time, sabotage of pipelines, gas pipelines, and industrial complexes spread throughout the country. The height of ecoterrorism is reached when attacks and shootings target parliamentarians, lobbyists, and captains of multinationals.
Textual variety
Stephen Markley still evokes with great plausibility migration crises, a major food crisis and several stock market crashes. To encompass all these events and themes, he plays with textual tricks: newspaper headlines and reports, press reviews, major interviews, excerpts from podcasts, scientific documents, secret reports and White House briefings. If the reading is not easy, an impressive dexterity and great narrative flexibility run through the book, thanks to its novelistic flesh.
Because at the heart of these three decades of History and political-environmental epic, there are eight main characters, living from the inside the key events and actions of the plot. Their individual odysseys intertwine with the chaos of the ecological crisis and a world on the brink of the abyss. Archetypical in appearance at the beginning, of different socio-professional classes, political tendencies, colors and genres, they will all gain in nuances and depth over the pages, so abundant and in perpetual motion is the multiplication of points of view around them, thanks to a galaxy of secondary characters and the textual variety of this choral novel.
It begins in 2013 in California, when Professor Tony Pietrus, a renowned scientist and author of a shocking book on climate change, receives death threats. The reader then discovers Ashir, a neurodivergent mathematician and genius of predictive analysis; Kate, a young environmental activist at the head of the NGO Fierce Blue Fire, icon of a generation; Shane, a revolutionary ecoterrorist, member of the secret organization 6Degrees; Jackie, an opportunistic advertising executive and expert in greenwashing; of the Pastor, a Hollywood actor turned leader of the evangelical far-right; of Keeper, a drug addict trying to survive on the fringes of progressivism; and of Matt, a student and aspiring writer. Sooner or later, all of them will cross paths and/or rub shoulders (very) closely or from afar and will see their lives turned upside down by the ongoing collapse.
Emotions and suspense
The most complex and captivating character is that of Kate Morris, particularly exposed, observed, studied, rubbed shoulders with, spied on and commented on, in public as in private, depicted for example in a long portrait in the form of a pastiche of an article by Vanity Fair. Stephen Markley mixes narrative in the first, second and third person singular. By rubbing shoulders so closely with the authenticity and intimacy of the eight characters, through the eyes of their loved ones and the public, by sticking to their successes or their failures, the reader also penetrates inside their fears, while confronting his own. The strength of the emotions felt and a certain suspense easily erase the more technical aspects of the book.
The Flood is not a thesis novel. Each character has a different relationship to the world, a personal perception and approach to the existential threat linked to climate change, itself seen through several prisms and different sources. We will nevertheless find a plea for a global decarbonization of the world economy and, unsurprisingly, for the urgency to act. And even a little hope.
Novel, Stephen Markley, “The Flood”, Translated from English by Charles Recoursé, Albin Michel 1056 pages
A week in English
Stephen Markley is the guest of the Reading Society in Geneva on September 24 at 7 p.m.
The Geneva Reading Society, in partnership with the America Festival in Vincennes, is organizing a series of meetings, from September 24 to 30, with English-speaking authors who will speak to the public in the “original language” (without an interpreter). The line-up is impressive, with, to open the show, Stephen Markley September 24 at 7 p.m., on Le Deluge (read above). Colson Whiteheada two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, will discuss The Rule of Crime (Crook manifesto), September 25. Known for his historical books, Anthony Sattin highlights, on the 26th, the importance of nomadic civilizations in shaping the world (Nomades, Noir sur Blanc). Terry Hayesjournalist and screenwriter, has hit the mark with his first thriller I am Pilgrim (I am Pilgrim). In Geneva, on September 28, he will present The Year of the Grasshopper (The Year of the Locust). And finally Rachel Cusk (Femina Foreign Prize for The Dependency), will discuss on September 30 Parade, novel where art and life mix in a disturbing way.
Reservation: www.societe-de-lecture.ch
