Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks

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