I chose to
read this novel because it appeared on the 2018 Giller Prize shortlist and the
brief plot outline intrigued me.
In 1981,
the southern U.S. is hit by a deadly pandemic.
Polly Nader’s fiancé Frank contracts the disease so Polly agrees to
travel to the future. A company named
TimeRaiser will give Frank the life-saving medicine developed in the future if
Polly agrees to travel to 1993 and work for 32 months helping to rebuild a
country devastated by the plague. Frank
and Polly agree to meet twelve years in the future and resume their lives. Polly, however, ends up in 1998. Frank does not meet her at the pre-arranged
location on any of the agreed-upon days and she is unable to get information as
to his whereabouts. Is he still alive
and, if he is, does he still love her?
The novel
examines love’s ability to survive through time. For Polly no time has passed when she arrives
in 1998, but for Frank, if he has survived, 17 years have passed. Being reunited with Frank becomes Polly’s
hope through difficult times: “From a
completely objective standpoint, the odds [of Frank waiting for her] were
poor. But in that secret, covered place,
between breastbone and sinew and pumping ventricle, Polly always knew he was coming”
(119) because “All that love. It can’t
die. It has to go somewhere” (178). As time passes, however, she experiences
periods of doubt: “Polly was not sure of
anything. [She wonders if] love could
neatly and unremarkably stop” though that thought “was more impossible and
terrible than travelling through all of time” (185). She takes solace by reminding herself of what
she had once been told: “No matter what
happens, the past has a permanence. The
past is safe” (235). Her mantra becomes,
“Once something’s been done, it can’t be undone” (260) because Frank once told
her, “Polly I can’t unlove you” (265).
The author’s
answer to the question of love’s durability through time may not satisfy
everyone but I found the ending totally realistic. Throughout the novel, there are flashbacks
which show the development of the relationship between Polly and Frank so what
happens at the end strikes me as exactly the way such a relationship would
unfold, given the circumstances.
The book is
more than a love story. It examines
migration and displacement, issues very pertinent to our time with its
widespread refugee crisis. When Polly
arrives in the future, she is a refugee from the past trying to navigate an
unrecognizable world. She has little
status, few rights, and no money. She is
an indentured servant who has to work off her debt, but because she has to pay
for almost everything, her debt to TimeRaiser keeps growing. Working and living conditions are poor, and
these only worsen for Polly when she is demoted from skilled worker to manual
labourer. To access information, journeymen
like her face endless bureaucracy.
The novel
also sheds light on the economic divide and the disconnect between rich and
poor. Because of the plague, the U.S.
becomes two countries, America in the south and the United States in the
north. The north is prosperous but the
south was devastated by the pandemic and is trying to recover. Polly is told that America is “’creating a
vacation belt . . . attracting hundreds of vacationers . . . We have . . . a
stream of cheap and willing workers . . . We have workers to build resorts, and
workers to work in them’” (56-57). I
could not help but think of Mexico, especially when many of the workers Polly
encounters speak Spanish.
The
movement of journeymen is curtailed; they cannot leave without permission. Polly has a surreal experience when she goes on
a walk looking for Frank. She is
arrested by Customs and Border Protection and questioned by an ICE agent: “’Why did you charge our wall’” (97)? And even with documentation to travel, people
from the south going north must endure medical screening and “the threatening looks
of the passport officials” (267).
When Polly
first arrives in the future, she joins hundreds of other workers pedaling on
stationary bicycles; she is told, “’The air conditioning runs on clean energy,
from pedal power, powered by people like you.
You get exercise and healthy living, the vacationers get lights and A/C’”
(48). Meanwhile, those cyclists live in
shipping containers. A journeyman may
harvest “swamp cabbage, wading out in coagulated waters as snakes writhed
around her knees” but “Up north, they bought the greens in capsules, two
dollars a pill, as an immune-system booster” (182).
Though it
has insights, the book is not without its flaws. Polly is dull and emotionless and makes some
stupid decisions so it is difficult to connect with her. The book becomes tedious at times when
nothing happens. I don’t think it will
win the Giller Prize, but I have yet to read the other nominees - and I have been wrong in the past.
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