Six Degrees of Separation: The Road to After the Flood

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate of Books Are My Favourite and Best in which our lovely host chooses a book and participants take it from there: creating a chain of books, each connected to the one before. Seeing where we end up is half the fun! 

It is rare I have actually read the book that starts the chain, and this is one of the cases in which I have. The Road by Cormac McCarthy made quite an impression on me when I read it. In my 2013 review I wrote: "the writing is brilliant, the story stark and depressing and yet full of love with a (very) dim spark of hope." The novel is about a young boy and his father as they travel toward the coast in an inhospitable, post-apocalyptic world.

Thinking of that father and son pair existing in such dire circumstances, trying to survive, instantly brought to mind Melanie and Justineau from The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey, a dystopian novel in which  the last of the healthy survivors live in fear of a infectious fungal virus that causes people to lose their mental abilities and feed on the healthy. While the two characters are not blood related, they have a relationship much like that of a daughter and mother. Melanie is a part of a scientific experiment, and when the head doctor decides it is time for her to be dissected, her teacher, Justineau steps in and the two end up on the run, trying to make their way to what they hope will be a protected establishment.

Concern of a contagion and being on the run for their lives, immediately made me think of The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, in which the last boy in a town of men uncovers a forbidden secret and must go on the run. At the beginning of the novel, the reader learns it is believed that a "germ" released by the local inhabitants of the planet killed all of the women and many of the men, making it impossible for the thoughts of the men to remain hidden from one another. It's another novel set in a rather dire world, this one another planet, and, like the previous book, the characters are on a journey for their lives.

A crazy preacher and a contagion lead me straight to The Stand by Stephen King next (there's a crazy preacher in Ness's book and a character worshiped as the "messiah" in King's), which features a weaponized influenza epidemic accidentally released onto the population, taking most people out.  Anarchy ensues, while people try to survive, some attempting to build safe communities to live in.

In writing The Stand, Stephen King wanted to create his own epic story in the spirit of Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. King's Randall Flagg a version of the Dark Lord; Las Vegas was cast to represent Mordor.

An unlikely band of characters comes together to help Frodo on his mission in The Lord of the Rings. Similarly, Yumeko, the heroine in Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa picks up her own unlikely traveling companions as she journeys to a far off temple to deliver a part of an ancient scroll, chased by evil forces. Both Frodo and Yumeko face difficult journeys, each with their own burden to bear.

Yumeko guards her part of the scroll well, including keeping the very fact she has it at all from her companions, especially the dangerous and mysterious samurai who is after the scroll himself. Myra is not completely honest with her companions either when they take her and her daughter, Pearl, onto their boat in After the Flood by Kassandra Montag. She does what she can to gain the crew's trust and convince them to go where she needs them to go in the search for her older daughter, even if it means lying to them.

After the Flood is a post-apocalyptic novel set  a century or so from now; floodwaters have overtaken much of the land and coastal cities and even much of the inlands are covered in water. Myra and Pearl have been on their own for many years, living on the water and stopping on land only when they need food or supplies. It is a bleak and near hopeless novel about a mother and her child that brought to mind McCarthy's The Road as I read it. How fitting then that my chain brings me right back to the beginning. Each novel in the chain takes the characters on a quest of some sort, whether it be in search of something or to deliver something or just with the hope of surviving.

All of these are excellent books I highly recommend if you have not yet read them! 

Next month we’ll begin with Sally Rooney’s best seller (and now a TV series), Normal People.

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