After Me Comes the Flood

I can see why this book would divide opinion. It's a strange, claustrophobic tale with Gothic elements and reads like a fever dream. Not for everyone then.

It opens on the 30th day of a baking hot drought and a man closing up his bookshop, which no-one ever visits, and driving off....where? Even he doesn't know. Eventually he abandons the car at the edge of a wood and walks on to discover a house, a large house full of strangers who all seem to be expecting him, or at least someone with the same name.

So begins a story of mistaken identity, of strange atmosphere and oppressive summer days. The cast of characters are ex inmates of some retreat or asylum, but they aren't ill, just disturbed or broken in some way. Hester, the old woman who has a hidden longing and other secrets. Alex the broken, fragile youth. His porcelain skinned sister, Clare. The sensual piano player, Eve. The lapsed agoraphobic preacher, Elijah; and Walker, the accountant who has some kind of relationship with Eve.

Into all this walks the man, John Cole, and he finds himself increasingly entangled in their lives. Over the course of the week he keeps a journal or else it would all seem unreal, a dream.

For a first novel this is extraordinarily confident. The self-contained narrative has a dream-like quality that is unsettling and compelling at the same time. Water is a constant - the threat of the coming storm to break the drought; the reservoir at the end of the garden which draws Alex to it time and again. The seaside trip, the sweat that drenches them all.

If, in the end, the resolution is rushed, and loose ends left dangling, well...dreams do that. It's not a book for everyone but I enjoyed it.