Great Psychological Novel – After Me Comes The Flood

While my first blog post was about the strangest book I have ever read in the bad way, this second book review is about the strangest book I have ever read in the best way possible. Introducing…After Me Comes The Flood by Sarah Perry, a book about a man named John who finds himself in a home secluded from the rest of the world, inhabited by a group of people who all met at St. Jude, a psychiatric hospital. The house had been expecting a Jon Coules to arrive to come be with them instead of John Cole, the protagonist. Only Elijah has ever actually seen Jon before, so he’s the only one who realizes. John battles between whether he should leave or stay and feels bad lying to them. I think the best way to talk about this novel would be to explore my thoughts on its themes and the literary elements I found interesting rather than simply talking about what happens, because it’s not entirely clear what happens or what you’re meant to think has happened in the novel. I’ll try and not talk too much about the later half of the novel, but there will still be major spoilers!!

Religion

After John comes into the house by chance, Alex arrives late. John notes that golden light seems to halo him when he arrives and the conversation seems to surround him. Based on this, I wrote down in my notes that Alex may be meant to represent ‘God’ or a sort of godly figure. Plus, Eve, another character in the story, says that she’s afraid not to follow him and Alex’s younger sister, Clare, seems to worship him (though this could be because they’re siblings and have a large age gap). However, as the story continues, Alex’s ‘godly’ role becomes less and less apparent. His role more or less gets replaced by Hester, an elderly woman who is consistently described as ugly but with eyes that can see everything and a voice that makes you want to listen to her, regardless of what she says.

Also, most of the characters have names that reference those who appear in the Bible. As an atheist, the only one I recognized was Eve from the Adam and Eve story, but I read the notes in the back of the book that said most of the characters do. I’ll name them all here, so if anyone knows the references, let me know! I want to analyze this book fully!

1. Alex
2. Clare
3. Elijah
4. Eve
5. Hester
6. John
7. Walker

Water

Everyone’s afraid of water in this novel. Alex is afraid that the water near the house will overflow because of floods he has been hearing about in letters he’s been receiving, for example. The characters plan on going a trip to the sea (which they end up doing) and they are very scared for the trip before they go. John sees this fear of water to be completely irrational. I find it interesting since the title talks about a ‘flood’. I was hoping that by the time I got back to my draft of this blog, I’d have a conclusive thought to offer about this theme, but I don’t. The more and more I think about everything, the less meaning I see in the water. Maybe that’s intentional? Maybe Perry wants us to focus on the water, even going so far as to put it in the title, but it doesn’t actually mean anything at all? I doubt it, to be honest, but that’s intriguing.

Literary Elements

Perspective

I ADORE how this story uses perspective! The story begins in John’s first-person perspective as he writes in Jon Coule’s journal that he found in his room. Then the story switches, without any direct explanation, to John’s third-person perspective. Every time he writes in the journal after that, the story switches to first-person perspective. Other characters sometimes get to take the spotlight too (in third-person perspective) as well which provides the story with a beautiful amount of depth into the characters.

Introduction

I’m not sure what the correct word to use for this would be (or if one exists), so I’m just going to use the term ‘introduction’ to refer to how the author introduces each of the characters. For most of the characters, John has to learn their names, mostly through overhearing other’s conversations. But Alex’s name, on the other hand, seems to be known already. Instead of taking the time to say something like “the boy with red hair who arrived late, Alex” , Perry decides to just randomly start calling this character ‘Alex’. I thought maybe I had just missed this small bit of text, but later on, in a chapter from Walker’s perspective that explains how everyone met at St. Jude, the text goes out of its way to say that no one knew Alex’s name when he first arrived. And then, boom, Alex’s name is given to us in the middle of the text. As if he needs no introduction. This supports the theory that he is meant to be a ‘God’ sort of figure above.

Thoughts

John writes in Jon’s journals and even wears his clothes, which means his stuff was already at the house. How did it get there if Jon hasn’t been in the house before? Maybe I didn’t read closely enough at this part for the explanation, but I love the idea that this is because John was destined to be there and this stuff is just his own stuff, somehow.

The weirdest part about this psychological text? IT EXPLAINS ITSELF! Not in all ways, obviously, but there were many aspects of the story that I was expecting to end up being unexplained to let the audience decide what happened, and then BOOM! Explanation! For example, I fully expected the mistake between ‘John Cole’ and ‘Jon Coule’ to remain mysterious and imply that John was the one destined to show up at this strange house. But, in the very same chapter, John answers a phone call that no one else is around to hear from, lo and behold, the actual Jon Coule. He’s even given dialogue, which implies me that Jon Coule does actually exist in the story (which muddles what I said before, but it’s still an interesting thought).

Also, speaking on the subject of Jon Coule, he tells John that he hasn’t arrived at the house yet and he won’t be able to arrive for another week. John decides to leave the house after a week. Maybe the title implies that the ‘flood’ is Jon Coule? But water also has a lot of symbolism in the story.