Our greatest achievement as a species has been to break free from the sheer naked ferocity of evolution. It means we need GM food to avoid starvation. We need additives to ensure that the food we grow can be safely consumed before it spoils — an important consideration for an increasing population. And most importantly of all, we need vaccines to prevent disease. We must never again expose our children to the wholesome, fully organic, unblemished and obscene fury of Mother Nature unleashed. Love science, hate evolution. Coming to a car bumper sticker near you soon, I hope.
This is a slow-burn book, low-key enough for Jackson to take time to develop the main characters, particularly Lelle and Meja, two characters with a longing and emptiness inside. Like high school teacher Lelle, Meja is lonely, but she is also bored, afraid of the isolation and vast distances. So her willing response and sexual awakening when three local brothers, one in particular, pay her attention is hardly surprising. Even when she discovers they and their family are survivalists, she is not deterred.
While partly a whodunnit – who took Lina? – Silver Road is also a hauntingly atmospheric story of love and loss and longing. Written in Swedish, this English-language version owes much to Susan Beard's translation of Jackson's evocative language.
This is not a book, then, that aims for the coherence of a conventional novel. The appropriately classical motif of weaving runs throughout, and the stitches at the back of the tapestry are on show. The Porpoise often hints at its own construction, with characters intuiting a significance to events that is just beyond their reach. The different worlds sometimes jut into each other as the narrative dances on the threshold between reality and imagination.
Though you are their sole suspect
though they capture you on Columbus Day
though their conqueror’s pallor dulls the night’s obsidian pulse
though they smash the whorled tips of your fingers against the ink