It’s been seven years since the last of Justin’s vampiric Passage Trilogy, The City of Mirrors – was published. This is his first book since. It is clear that he’s been busy.
The Ferryman is set on the archipelago of Prospera – a kind of elitist gated community where rich people live long lives in health, wealth and prosperity until their monitors, embedded in their forearms, fall below 10%. Then the person travels, usually by choice, via ferry to the island known as The Nursery where they retire themselves.
The narrative is focussed upon Proctor Bennett who works for the Department of Social Contracts. It is his job to ferry people to the Nursery, easing their journey as much as possible – or occasionally enforcing the trip.
Yet for him all is generally good. He is in the 8th year of a 15-year marriage contract with Elise, who is the daughter of Calliste Baird, Prospera’s CEO of the board of directors. He has a nice home, is earning good money and is in a job that he likes and that he is good at. However, Proctor has recently been having vivid dreams, a recurrence of something he had when younger but thought he had grown out of. Not a major issue you might think, but people in Prospera are just not supposed to have them – their lives and wellbeing are monitored, after all.
Not only that, but his own monitor has suddenly started to drop alarmingly quickly.
When Proctor is requested to take his own father to the Nursery, he finds himself questioning the social order of things at Prospera. This leads him to discover that many of the Support Staff – the cleaners, the waiters that provide a service – have been feeling the same way. There is a growing unrest not really noticed by most of those who are elite. On the island known as the Annex, where the workers live, there is a noticeable presence of a resistance group, known as “Arrivalists”, who may be stirring things up and further causing unrest. They may even be plotting revolution. Proctor meets Thea, one of the resistance working on Prospera in secret, and Pappi, a blind painter who lives in the Annex and is also involved in the unrest.
So here in the first three-quarters of the book we have the not-particularly-new idea of a society that is a utopian paradise but whose smooth running is based upon the less idyllic labours of others, kept down and oppressed by the mechanics of society and government. See also Metropolis, Brave New World and many others.
The plot up to this point may not be new in concept, but what it does, it does very well. But where Justin scores here is in the fine details. The characterisation is thoughtful and detailed, the environment they move through compellingly written, the feelings of those involved charmingly appropriate and real. There’s even some great little ideas about how such a society would run. However, as the story continues, we actually find that much of that idyllic portrayal of daily life is not what it seems. Proctor is really quite a troubled individual, and despite those initial appearances it seems that his wife doesn’t really understand him. He finds himself attracted to Thea, even though it may mean trouble.
Further complications ensue when Proctor meets Caeli, a young teenager on a deserted beach. He finds her to be a good companion, and offers to give her swimming lessons. However, when he tries to check up on her details, Proctor is told that she doesn’t exist. Is she one of the Arrivalists or someone/something else? Why is she there?
And then just when you think that you can see where the book is going, there’s a twist three-quarters of the way in. This may be a gamechanger, for what is revealed I suspect will either be obvious to readers or be extremely frustrating. I’m not going to repeat it here as it might spoil the whole book for some, but its appearance may either make you cheer for its audacity or groan in disbelief. Without giving details away, it means that the whole book can be summed up by a cliché that I recognise is so beloved of many a soap opera. The rest of this book is about dealing with this revelation.
In the big scheme of things though, it matters little. I can see that this is a book where you don’t need to worry about the destination, but can enjoy the journey. And don’t get me wrong, The Ferryman shows a writer of obvious skill who can write in depth, adding great details and nuances of character. There’s more than enough to keep a reader entertained, even if you are unsure of that ending.
In short, The Ferryman is a great read, if not for me a totally unqualified success. I’ll be interested to hear what others think about it as they read.
THE FERRYMAN by Justin Cronin
Published by Ballantine/Corvus, May 2023
560 pages
ISBN 978 052 561 9475
Review by Mark Yon
