The Ferryman happily carries readers from mystery to mayhem
The Ferryman
Justin Cronin
Ballantine
“This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot predicted, “not with a bang but a whimper.”
Nope, says epic world-ender Justin Cronin.
In 2010, Cronin published The Passage, one of the most frightening apocalyptic novels of the modern age. If there was any whimpering in that bang-up job, it was the smothered chorus of millions of people being eaten by vampires.
Now, Cronin is looming over us again with another apocalyptic novel, this one more batty than vampiric. The Ferryman grabs bits of stardust from several sci-fi classics. The trippy effect is like watching Inception on an airplane while the passenger next to you watches The Matrix without earphones. Indeed, to get through this chaotic story, you'll need the red pill and the blue pill and some Adderall.
The eerie first half — by far the better — is set on Prospera, an island paradise hidden from the rest of the world by an impenetrable electromagnetic barrier. “Prosperans,” as the glorious inhabitants are called, enjoy a civilization “free of all want and distraction.” They devote their attractive selves entirely to “creative expression and the pursuit of personal excellence.”
Like good Republicans, Prosperans imagine that everything about their system of static privilege is “entirely beneficent.” But members of the vast “support staff ” harbour a somewhat different impression. Crammed onto a dreary adjacent island known as the Annex, these men and women of supposedly “lesser biological and social endowments” are expected to perform their various duties without complaint. And mostly, they do. If a few stress fractures are starting to zigzag across the surface of that social arrangement, the powers that be remain convinced they can keep control.
Control turns out to be the primary principle of this society, as it is in so many utopias. Beneath their shiny skins, Prosperans are biologically sterile but technically immortal. They maintain their vitality through a repeated process of bodily “reiteration.” They all arrive — or re-arrive — as polite 16-year-olds and begin living lives of “the highest aspirations,” which is how you can tell this is a fantasy.
Most Prosperans willingly sail off to the Nursery, eager “to be reborn as a fresh-faced brighteyed teenager in perfect health.” But sometimes, alas, a reluctant or confused old fogey must be persuaded. Think Logan's Run with a touch of Throw Momma From the Train.
Although Cronin made his reputation by destroying the world, he's actually better at building it, with all its attendant faults. Our narrator, Proctor Bennett, is one of the highly respected ferrymen who lead expiring Prosperans to the dock and launch them over to Nursery Isle for a refresh. The hypnotic horror of this exposition arises from how reasonable and gracious Proctor sounds, how much pride he takes in ritualized euthanasia. “We were,” he tells us, “the shepherds of emotional order in one of life's most challenging moments.”
But the placid tone of Proctor's life is shattered early in the novel. Soon after he explains to us the exquisite order of life on Prospera, he receives an unusual assignment: He's to escort his own 126-year-old father to the ferry for reiteration. “You'll make new memories,” Proctor tells his old man, falling back on the usual script. “Think how wonderful it's going to feel to be young again, your whole life ahead of you.”
His father seems resigned to the process, to his duty, and everything is going fine until suddenly it isn't.