Distraction amid the dystopia
Cataclysm has stuck. The Rending. One fine afternoon, 95 per cent of the world vanished. People, animals, food, things. Buildings robbed of their columns keel over. The hodge-podge of humanity left over contend with perpetually grey skies and a lack of rain, the earth saturated every few days from within. Immense mountains of waste junk materialise, called “Piles”.
Nothing grows above ground, but some survivors establish a camp amid the wastes. It’s here that we meet Mira, the narrator of Kaethe Schwehn’s first novel, a fable aiming for the mood and style of Margaret Atwood’s
MaddAddam Trilogy. Barely past adolescence, Mira struggles to contend with the impervious, pointless future laid before her, racked by memories of her time in The Before: beloved young brother, depressive mother, preacher father.
The novel hinges on the women who grow pregnant in this community. Mira’s friend Lana, at first. Then others. Then Mira herself. One by one they push out pieces of tragic kitsch: a hollow-eyed porcelain doll, a pair of ivory chopsticks, a triplet of stuffed birds.
These stillbirths provoke further despair and questions. Are these unwelcome arrivals meant to signify something about this broken world? Mira’s attempt to lend meaning to it leads straight into a consideration of religion.
This is done without much subtlety. The survivors refer to their camp as Zion. Mira dwells at length on her lack of faith. There’s mention of Jonah’s digestion by oversized marine life, Jacob’s Ladder, Adam and Eve, crucifixion. Even The Rending itself is named after the tearing of the Temple veil on Jesus’ death.
This might appear heavy-handed analogy but Schwehn subverts it by arguing that religion can be reduced down to its narrative consolations. Stories, in other words, are essential to us. They render a meaningless world meaningful.
Clever enough. But what’s too clever by half is Schwehn’s occasional use of heavily sardonic, ironised language. For example: “’This isn’t Mission Impossible, Mira.’ I had kind of been imagining Mission Impossible. Talia started humming the Mission Impossible theme. ‘Shut up, Talia.’” This stuff is highly distracting and calls to mind Diablo Cody’s irreverent film
Juno, rather than Atwood’s lyrical and poetic sense.
The Rending and the Nest, nevertheless, is an imaginative, sometimes chilling take on dystopian fiction.