Under the Covers

 

Fallen Land

By Patrick Flanery

(Riverhead, $27.95, 416 pages)

Who is this author?

He was born on the West Coast, raised in the mid-West and educated at the University of Oxford in England. Patrick Flanery first gained attention as the author of the much-praised “Absolution,” set in South Africa, and now turns his attention to the American heartland and disturbing trends in American life.

 

What is this book about?

Flanery told an NPR reviewer that his aim in writing “Fallen Land” was to explore the effects of the housing crisis:

“I came to thinking about the housing crisis as the natural setting for the story that I wanted to tell. Because I had this vision of somebody who was in a house that was no longer theirs. And it seemed logical to set it against the backdrop of the housing crisis and think about how that was affecting very different kinds of people and the very different situations they find themselves in after foreclosure auctions and things like that.”

So he gives us a doomed development called Dolores Woods (an apt name, when we remember that Dolores means sorrow). Built on land owned for generations by an African American family, who got it following a lynching, it now houses half-finished McMansions and the developer’s foreclosed home, newly bought by a family from Boston – with a son named Copley — who don’t know what they are getting into. Also unbeknownst to the Noailles family, the developer is still living in the house, hiding out below ground in a secret bunker like an especially demented Doomsday Prepper that only the troubled son of the family can see, leading to clashes with his father.  Also still secretly in Dolores Woods is the wife of the sharecropping family, living off the grid not for ecological reasons, but because she cannot afford to pay for utilities. Hovering malignly over all of them is the EKK corporation, which employs Nathaniel Noailles and is  a vast multinational octopus reaching into spheres from private prisons to private schools to entertainment, and not with good intentions or results.

 

“I wanted the book to speak to a kind of crisis in neighborliness, and thinking about the ways in which people are becoming so inward-looking, and the ways in which it’s incredibly easy — I think in part because of technology — not to think about what’s happening around us. And that’s not just thinking about security but thinking about who needs help. So it’s almost about a crisis of empathy with the people that we should be looking out for but who we fail to look out for in fairly fundamental ways.”

“I wanted the book to speak to a kind of crisis in neighborliness, and thinking about the ways in which people are becoming so inward-looking, and the ways in which it’s incredibly easy — I think in part because of technology — not to think about what’s happening around us. And that’s not just thinking about security but thinking about who needs help. So it’s almost about a crisis of empathy with the people that we should be looking out for but who we fail to look out for in fairly fundamental ways,” Flanery told NPR.

Why you’ll like it:                                 

This is a book that combines elements of the mystery novel, the psychological thriller, family problems, contemporary political and financial issues and more, but not in a preachy or heavy-handed way. All these elements are explored, but always in the context of human foibles and tragedy. Flanery’s compelling story and deft handling of its people and plot has earned this novel starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist and Library Journal, no mean feat.

What others are saying:

Says Booklist:  “The land once belonged to Louise’s family, but she had to sell it in the wake of her husband’s death. Now she watches from the small plot that remains in her possession as Paul Krovik erects his new housing development, beginning with his own home. But Paul’s vision is ill-founded, and when he loses everything, he sinks into madness and goes into hiding in a bunker beneath his house. Chasing their own dreams, Julia and Nathaniel buy Paul’s foreclosed home and move to the small town with their son. Unaware of the man living below them, they cannot conceive of their danger. As they become increasingly mindful of an unexplainable presence in their home, Nathaniel’s reservations about the move grow to the point of insanity, leading them all toward the tragedy hinted at in the novel’s beginning. This psychological thriller doesn’t stop at suspenseful and chilling, though. Fallen Land deconstructs the American dream to expose its most damning flaws and unsound foundations. The novel is rich in imagery and metaphor, and its conclusions are deeply disturbing. Written with the same elegance and ease demonstrated in Absolution (2012), Flanery’s second novel will keep readers riveted from intriguing prelude to stunning finale.”

Says Publishers Weekly:  “Flanery’s engrossing new novel speaks to modern anxieties through themes of loss. In an unnamed Midwestern city, Paul Krovik has lost his business due to incompetence, his home due to foreclosure, and his family due to divorce. Now he lives in a bunker adjoining his former home. Neighbor Louise Washington is being evicted from her home on her family farm, which is being sold off to satisfy debts. Nathaniel Noailles’s family—Boston transplants now living in Paul’s old house—is falling apart, partly due to poltergeistlike nighttime visits from Paul (who emerges in the pantry via a secret tunnel) and partly due to son Copley’s difficulties in a draconian school run by Nathaniel’s employer, the sinister multinational security corporation EKK. Convinced that Copley is responsible for the disturbances in the house, Nathaniel ignores the problems he is having at school. Only Copley’s mother Julia—and Louise—believe the boy is innocent. Flanery (Absolution) excels in depicting psychic anguish. Paul is both disturbing and fascinating, and Copley, helpless in the face of his father’s increasing harshness, is eminently sympathetic. The characters’ struggles culminate in a shocking and memorable denouement.

Kirkus Reviews says: “The cataclysm at the root of Flanery’s (Absolution, 2012) second novel is an act of mob violence 100 years past. Two men are lynched, one white, one black. The deed to the white man’s farm falls to the black man’s brother, Louise Washington’s ancestor. Louise was a teacher; her husband, Donald, farmed, but he was caught between high interest rates and low crop prices. Before he could recover, he died. Now, Louise, evicted by eminent domain, trespasses in her own home. Paul Krovik, an ambitious contractor, secured rights to build Dolores Woods, a McMansion development, on Louise’s land. Then the housing bubble burst, the development failed, and Paul was evicted from his model home while also losing his family. In this “dolorous forest of infinite sorrow,” Paul lurks in his house’s secret basement shelter. From their lairs, these outliers watch Nathaniel and Julia and their boy, Copley, move into Krovik’s house. Julia is a research scientist. Nathaniel, reluctant to leave Boston, will be National Director of Offender Rehabilitation for EKK, once into security and incarceration management but now exerting massive influence in areas ranging from biotech to entertainment. Nathaniel and Julia are profession-centered and blind to reality, but Copley, “unfailingly polite, reserved, self-contained, all of his processes and emotions hidden,” encounters Paul. No one believes Copley, but Paul, increasingly paranoid, soon surfaces to destroy more dreams than his own. In a literary effort far different from his accomplished debut, Flanery explores family and social mores, cataloging emotional damage tumbling from generation to generation, all woven into a metaphorical tale about the human cost of bubble economics, the undermining of personal freedoms in the name of homeland security and the ugly consequences of the privatization of public service. Characters and back stories are both authentic and chilling, as when EKK’s CEO declares “[p]rivate is now public, in the interests of security.” In a novel both symbolic and philosophical, Flanery’s dark view of human ambition, weakness and complacency is both thoughtful and terrifying. A haunting, layered allegory.”

“Now, on the back of his highly regarded South Africa–set debut, Absolution, Patrick Flanery takes up the challenge of what DeLillo calls ‘the American mystery’ in a new novel that also explores the dark shadows cast by history and old lies. . . . In Fallen Land, Flanery has given us a gripping thriller, and a superb portrayal of how ordinary men can veer into madness, but its real power lies in its recognition of the tragic failure of an American dream that should have tried, at least, to live up to Francis Bellamy’s principle of ‘liberty and justice for all.’ ” says The Guardian.

When is it available?

You can explore “Fallen Land” now at the Downtown Hartford Public Library or its Dwight or Mark Twain branches.

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