DEVOLUTION

Bigfoot and big ideas

RELEASED OUT NOW! 282 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Max Brooks Publisher Century

A community isolated through natural disaster is faced with a lack of resources, technological shutdown and a very serious threat to their lives in Max Brooks’s survivalist horror. Not a pandemic story, Devolution is a very realistic and scary tale about privileged people in a bubble of eco-housing, drone delivery and getting back to nature who find themselves absolutely ill-equipped to cope when nature proves to be less friendly than anticipated.

If anyone can write a genuinely convincing and unsettling book about a family of Bigfoot, it’s Brooks. The writer who brought new life to the zombie genre with his “oral history of the zombie war”, World War Z, brings the same reportage style to Devolution. The story is structured around the abandoned diary of Kate Holland, who moves with her husband to the idyllic community of Greenloop, which is then suddenly cut off after the eruption of Washington volcano Mount Rainier. Brooks intersperses Kate’s story from inside Greenloop with fictional interviews, real-life quotes and examples from world history which serve to create a cautionary tale that feels nothing less than completely convincing from start to finish, exploring man’s dangerously arrogant relationship to nature. More than a social satire though, Devolution is personal, emotional and character-led, as the timid Kate learns survival skills through her mentor, the rough but practical Mostar – an older woman with experience of conflict and hardship that becomes invaluable. The residents of Greenloop are recognisable and beautifully drawn, and there’s humour here too, though the novel becomes more violent and harrowing as the disaster escalates.

There’s nothing comical about these Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) though: they’re a highly intelligent species paralleling our own, intent on ensuring the survival of the pack any way they can. As society shudders outside our own front doors, Brooks’s novel is timely, terrifying and utterly terrific. A deft horror and a chilling fable that blurs lines between man and monster.

Another Washington volcano, Mount Helens, erupted in 1980, killing 57 people and destroying homes, roads and railways.