“The Deluge” by Stephen Markley, translated from English (United States) by Charles Recoursé, Albin Michel, “Terres d’Amérique”, 1,056 p., €24.90, digital €17.
Generous in catastrophes, massacres, political violence and apocalyptic scenes, The Floodthe voluminous second novel by the American Stephen Markley, is nevertheless distinguished by its treatment of the intimate and the detailed, of sweetness and bitterness. Its very convincing description of climate change and the ideological and social storm that accompanies it is in fact based on a web of fragile, even tiny, emotions and thoughts.
Scrupulously attached to the imperceptible movements of the soul and heart of each of its characters, the narration passes through a multitude of needle eyes to show us the world sinking. Even more than the megafire El Demonio, which ravages Los Angeles in 2031, or Hurricane Kate, which wipes out a large part of North Carolina in 2039, the wanderings and errors, the revolts and renunciations of Matt, Keeper, Jackie, Shane and the other castaways in the novel tell the reader very precisely this hell that pretends to be before us but is already ours.
Highly noted for his first novel, Ohio (Albin Michel, Grand Prix de littérature américaine 2020), Stephen Markley, born in 1983, worked on this new book for about ten years, before its publication in the United States in 2023. Its scope, its subject, its ability to play with the codes of documentary fiction as well as dystopia are impressive, obviously. But the most striking thing is elsewhere. Far from nestling comfortably in the hollow of a conventional epic architecture or a classic novelistic tempo – in the manner, for example, of Roland Emmerich’s film The Day After (2004) –, the author seems, on the contrary, to enjoy misleading his reader.
A consummate art of ellipsis
Polyphonic as well as polymorphic, the novel changes narrative thread as well as character and is largely built on a consummate art of ellipsis, constantly jumping from one story to another, from one decade to another, which is a shame for such a meticulous and dense text – a few fake press cuttings, investigations and reports filling the gaps, spanning eras and events.
Because, in the time of a generation (2013-2039), The Flood tries the impossible: to grasp the consequences of global warming from the perspective of women and men (and a particularly successful non-binary character too). Whether they are millennial activists working behind the scenes of US power in Washington, paranoid eco-terrorists, repentant and hesitant capitalists, US army veterans, fentanyl-addicted outcasts or overwhelmed single mothers, everyone is trying as best they can to get by.
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