With “World War Z” back in 2013 and now with “Devolution,” certainly a child of the found-footage movie craze, Max Brooks has fully embraced the faux oral history novel. Subtitled “A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre,” the novel pulls together snippets of journals and interviews to tell its tale.
I grew up in a house with books on Bigfoot and the Lock Ness
Monster tucked in tightly next paperback copies of “Lord of the Rings,” “Dune” “Chariots
of the Gods,” and “A Man Called Intrepid.” It took me a while to work my way up
to the latter, but Bigfoot was just as often found with me than in its place on
the shelf. Pouring over glossy photo pages at the heard of the book, I’d stare
hard at the grainy image of a hairy beast stepping over a felled tree,
seemingly looking back to me before it’d continue on its way and disappear into
the woods. So many trees, and so many places to hide! It would have been
close-minded of me at the time--and now--to entertain a slim chance that
something strange lurked out there and remained to be discovered.
“Devolution” takes as its conceit that a disparate group of
urbanites have opted to become the inaugural members of a new green community
nestled deep in the woods. No expenses spared, the cutting edge of technology
is leveraged to reduce their carbon footprint and provide every urban comfort
while promoting wellness, togetherness and a back-to-nature mentality.
Tragedy strikes when Mount Rainier erupts, wreaking havoc in
the area and isolating the already remote outpost from broader civilization.
Drama enough would have ensued with just this, as people who were initially
strangers are suddenly called upon to solve problems and depend on others in
ways they hadn’t intended, but this is a monster story, and so things soon get
a little “hairy.”
I won’t say too much for fear of spoiling the book. The
pacing is good and builds to a satisfying conclusion, but I’ll admit I wasn’t
fully engaged with the characters. This is perhaps a drawback of the form
itself. Where we rely heavily on journal entries, we get one person’s insights
very clearly, in a heightened confessional style first-person narrative, but
we’re so deep into this person’s head, we fail to see much of the others’
except as foils. While the adventure is there, its characters fall strangely
flat and can’t seem to quite lift off the page into the round.
That said, with the novel coronavirus forcing us now to
reassess our places in the world as individuals and as communities, this novel
is nicely timed. A group of urban refugees with grandiose ideas of nature, our
place in it, and how to get close to the land comes to realize that no matter
our own strong feelings, nature doesn’t care about us. We may think we stand at
one pole, but the world turns despite our wishes and we may quickly find
ourselves at the bottom, looking up at something bigger and much scarier than
we are.
Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre
