Book Review: "After the Flood" by Kassandra Montag
*Spoiler alert!*
After the Flood by Kassandra
Montag is an ode to hope and survival in a world that makes living highly
uncertain. In that respect, it is similar to Station Eleven. Not to
mention that the characters were challenging, yet I could understand their
motivations, even as they drove me crazy.
This book takes place a hundred years into the future, where North
America has turned into a series of archipelagos after a flood of biblical
proportions. Myra and her seven-year-old daughter Pearl live on their boat, Bird,
trading fish for critical supplies, but never staying in one place too
long. That is, until she comes across news that her eldest daughter, Row—kidnapped
by her father in Nebraska before the floods—was seen in a faraway settlement in
the Arctic Circle.
Myra will do anything to get Row back, even joining the crew
of Sedna, who are looking to settle somewhere after being on the water
for years. Even as she and Pearl bond with the crew, their betrayal is a
ticking time-bomb. The settlement they are leading Sedna towards is
dangerous, controlled by a crew of ruthless raiders, known as the Lost Abbots. When
the crew finds out the truth, they start to turn on each other, putting
everything, including their very lives, at risk.
“You know what happens to kids who are abandoned? Who don’t believe they’re worth anyone staying around? It changes how you see yourself. Everyone else is walking around fine and it’s like you have a fucking hole in your chest and the whole world can reach in and touch anything in you. You have no armor. You never feel safe. I’m not just saving her from the Lost Abbots, I’m saving her from that. She . . . she has to know that I’m here for her.”
Granted, I’m not a mother myself, but Myra is as ruthless as
they come in trying to get Row back. I understand her motivations, I do, but
she puts her newfound family in dire straits, taking them through potentially ship-killing
storms and raider-infested waters. She engages in an annoying love triangle—I don’t
enjoy that common romantic trope—to convince the captain to travel north. (I
think the love triangle dropped my overall rating a bit.)
I suppose a post-apocalyptic atmosphere generates morally
ambiguous survivors, but there were times where After the Flood beats
the reader over the head with this idea. Even the story’s idealists aren’t who
they purport to be. And that’s okay. People aren’t perfect, and I wouldn’t be
able to predict what I would do in a similar environment where survival is the overwhelming
priority.
Despite the fact that I didn’t always like the characters in
this book, they are understandable in their various motivations. I cared about
each and every one of them and mourned when some of them perished on the
journey. Or when they reach their destination to find not everything is as
expected. I felt each and every emotional blow. Credit to the author for her searing
writing.
“I keep thinking grief feels like climbing a staircase while looking down,” she said. “You won’t forget where you’ve been, but you’ve got to keep rising. It all gets farther away, but it’s all still there. And you’ve only got one way to go and you don’t really want to go on rising, but you’ve got to. And that tightness in your chest doesn’t go away, but you somehow go on breathing that thinner, higher air. It’s like you grow a third lung. Like you’ve somehow gotten bigger when you thought you were only broken.”
After the Flood was one
of the more emotionally taxing and bleak stories I have read recently. Bleak
and yet full of hope.
“I knew it was sometimes easier to love ghosts than the people who were around you. Ghosts could be perfect, frozen beyond time, beyond reality, the crystal form they’d never been before, the person you needed them to be.”
If you enjoy post-apocalyptic fare, then I think you’ll
mostly find what you’re looking for in After the Flood. Just make sure
to have a tissue box or two beside you.
Happy reading!
--BookOwl
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