Jim Crace can be a perverse writer. In Being Dead the two main characters are dead and decomposing. In Quarantine a young, half-addled man around 30 AD irritates pilgrims in the desert. His name is Jesus. So I expected something of the same perversity in his latest novel, The Pesthouse. Instead, Crace surprises. This is a surprisingly warm and human story about two people, Franklin and Margaret, falling in love and struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic America.
The novel is not entirely without the character of the earlier books. The first several chapters describe with fond attentiveness how the population of a small settlement, Ferrytown, dies when overcome by lake gas stirred up by a landslide. And there is no shortage of corpses elsewhere in the novel. But for the most part the focus falls on Margaret, a young woman in her 30s, and Franklin, who is around 20. Franklin and his brother Jackson are making their way to the coast, hoping to take passage to another country across the sea where they plan to find work. When an injury forces Franklin to rest for several days, his brother goes on to the nearby town and succumbs to the gas along with everyone else. Franklin comes across Margaret in a small broken-down shack (the "pest house") where she was taken by her family when she showed symptoms of a disease they call the "flux." They take her there so she can recover or die—they don't want her to spread the illness to others; they also don't want potential ferry customers (the town's main livelihood) frightened away by disease. Once they discover what has happened in the town, Franklin and Margaret decide to travel together to the shore, where they hope to find passage like everyone else.
Although this is a post-apocalyptic story that takes place in an indeterminate future, it often seems like a medieval narrative. The culture and technology of the ruined nation is forgotten. People cannot read, they live in small communities isolated from other communities, and they fall periodically victim to whatever marauders happens to be passing by. Communication is by word of mouth. Transportation is by foot, horse-drawn carts, or boat. Society has collapsed. Most people who are able are traveling towards the shore, hoping to escape to another country. America is becoming increasingly depopulated. It is a broken, abandoned land.
The Pesthouse never explains the cause of the apocalypse that destroyed America. It was probably a nuclear war, but there is no evidence of radioactivity. Whatever the event might have been, it probably occurred at least a century or more in the past, judging by the state of the ruined cities and the general lack of information about or memory of the past. Margaret and Franklin travel through an empty land. Everyone is trying to leave. Cities lie in ruins. Marauding gangs murder, rape, kidnap, and lay waste. On the coast, a large settlement has grown up around the shipping industry. It teems with those who are trying to leave. No one remembers the past—faint shreds of memories, rumors, legends, stories. Margaret treasures a few Lincoln-head pennies, though she doesn't know who Lincoln was. Franklin and his brother Jackson carry the names of famous American heroes that no one remembers; Margaret's family had a dog named Jefferson. These relics are all that remain of the past, and other than describing the ruins through which the pilgrims pass, Crace spends little time musing over or providing information about the lost republic. What is most clear is that it is lost.
Especially with the marauding gangs that appear periodically to kill or kidnap travelers, forcing some into slave labor, one thinks occasionally of the Mad Max films here. But Crace doesn't overwhelm us with exaggerated descriptions of human depravity and decay, not to mention souped-up post apocalyptic dune buggies. His focus is on Franklin and Margaret, and an elegiac, pastoral tone envelops much of the book . We become increasingly concerned with two questions: when will Margaret and Franklin act on their love for each other (they think about it a lot), and what will ultimately happen to them? To express this point in another way: the novel has a powerful narrative force. Not the force of a story full of thrills and sudden surprises, not the force of a detective story or murder mystery, but the force of a story where the experiences and the ultimate welfare of the main characters are the center of interest. Margaret and Franklin in this regard remind me of Lena Grove and Byron Bunch in Faulkner's Light in August, which ends with their love for one another still unconsummated, though headed in that direction.
Narrative momentum lapses midway through the novel, when Franklin and Margaret are separated and we do not know whether they will find each other again. Margaret makes her way to the coastal city and joins up with a group of "Finger Baptists" for the winter. The Finger Baptists have built an "ark" in which members live and are sheltered from the outside world. They are forbidden to possess any form of metal, which they associate with technology and with evil. They're a bizarre cult whose revered leaders never exert any energy, relying on others to carry out necessary tasks for them. Rather than confront the problems of their world, the Finger Baptists simply hide. They are an interesting subplot that contributes little to the novel, and it is fortunate that Margaret does not remain with them. Crace's opinion of them is clear enough in the fate they ultimately suffer.
Given the subject and scenario, The Pesthouse is surprisingly upbeat. Although there is no rescue for Margaret and Franklin, there is finally a future--both for them and by implication for the land they decide not to abandon. At the end of the book they are headed back into the immense and empty interior of the American land, intent on making a life for themselves.
The Pesthouse is also a novel in which Crace seems to belie his own tendency towards uncompromising naturalism without illusions. We see evidence of that naturalism in the opening chapter descriptions of the deaths of the people of Ferrytown. We see it as well in his descriptions of the desolate fallen cities, the collapsed vestiges of human society, the brutality of humans towards one another. Where he confounds himself is in his treatment of Margaret and Franklin. He seems to like them. He can't bring himself to kill them off.
The immediate comparison for this novel is Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Both books describe a post-apocalyptic world. McCarthy describes a world that is dying out both culturally and ecologically. Most life has disappeared. In the waning days of the human race, two individuals struggle to retain vestiges of civilization and morality. In The Pesthouse there has been a war and terrific changes have occurred as a result, but life continues in altered fashion. What once was known as America has disappeared, modern civilization has collapsed, but humanity goes on. The Road is a tragedy while The Pesthouse is a celebration of the human will in the worst of circumstances to persevere.
Originally published in Blogcritics: The Pesthouse
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