"After Me Comes the Flood' by Sarah Perry

It is hard not to read a book that begins, “I’m writing this in a stranger’s room on a broken chair at an old school desk. The chair creaks if I move so I must keep very still.” A man is on his way to visit his brother during a heat wave when his car overheats on a country road. He walks to find water for the radiator and comes across a secluded house where he is greeted by a woman he at first takes for a child, and then by other residents of the house, who all seem to have been impatiently anticipating his arrival and greet him by name. Not assertive enough to point out their mistake, he is shown to ‘his’ room, where he finds the luggage of another man, whose name is a near-homonym of his. As time goes on it becomes more and more difficult for the incomer to deny what he feels is the role of an imposter, and his relationships with the residents become more complex and entrenched and frightening. The book, which switches back and forth between first and third person in a way that effectively robs the main character of agency whilst fatalising the consequences of his choices, is permeated by a feeling of dread: who are the residents of this house which exists in almost timeless isolation from ‘life’? What are they doing here and what do they want of him? Perry’s extremely claustrophobic book captures the terror of feeling that you are an imposter in your life, caught by the expectations of others, effective strangers, whose motivations are hidden by their surfaces and who are affected by your actions (or lack of them) in a way that further implicates you in a role you become increasingly powerless to escape.

(Oct 14)