25 July 2020 | New Scientist | 25Book
Afterland
Lauren Beukes
Michael Joseph (UK) and
Mullholland Books (US)
IF ALL the human cells in your body
were to suddenly dematerialise,
your outline would briefly persist, in
all its exquisite detail, in the form of
the billions of bacteria and viruses
that colonise your every nook and
cranny, still suspended in the shape
of the frame your body provided.
Something analogous happens
in Lauren Beukes’s novel Afterland,
available in July worldwide and in
September in the UK. Over about
two years, a pandemic kills nearly
every man in the world, leaving
its patriarchal systems staffed
exclusively by women. Cole, the
mother of one of the precious few
surviving boys, needs to get him out
of the US and back to their home in
South Africa. Her sister, meanwhile,
wants to sell him. This gives the
novel its structure and speed: it is a
deceptively simple heist caper, with
Cole on the run across the US from
both her sister and the Department
for the Protection of Males.
The organisation is charged with
imprisoning the few males that
remain, probing them to find
whatever biological quirk has spared
them from the plague and using
that knowledge to find a vaccine for
the virus. Its aim of jump-starting
society “back to normal” will be
uncomfortably familiar as we too
languish in a pandemic limbo
between the Before and the After,
hoping for our own vaccine. The
misguided waiting game in the
novel results in a few temporary
accommodations to reality: straight
women negotiate awkward first
dates with one another, while fake
baby bumps become the hottest
fashion accessory.
So who gets to maintain
civilisation now, and do women run
a better society than men? This is
where the book shines as one of the
best thought experiments of its
kind, in which Beukes has stitched
together the surprise matriarchy of
The Power, the millenarian despair
of Children of Men and the deeply
intelligent questions of Ursula Le
Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.
The Power – in which women
develop the ability to give electric
shocks, ending their status as the
“weaker sex” once and for all –concludes that women are just as
bad as men when in ultimate control.
Beukes’s take is more ambiguous.
Like Le Guin, she seems to conclude
that it doesn’t much matter if it is
women or men in charge of society,
as it is the structures themselves
that turn us into monsters. “You
have to be bigger and meaner as
a woman to claim your turf,” Cole’s
sister tells herself, negotiating her
nephew’s kidnapping on behalf of
the widow of the kingpin she used
to work for. The widow has slid intohis place, just as easily as the thugs
around her have shifted from being
vicious beauty queens to vicious
enforcers. The Sisters of Sorrow, the
religious community in which Cole
and her son take refuge, somehow
figures out how to make Christianity
even more violently misogynistic in
a world without men.
Yet it isn’t all nihilism. Beukes
seeds the book with hopeful
rumours of matriarchal societies
that have sprung up in other
countries. There are never many
details beyond the promise, like
mirages just over the horizon. “They
say the matriarchal societies have
been a lot better about getting rid of
the homosexuality laws,” promises
an email from a friend trying to help
them escape across the Atlantic. It is
a promise of a better body politic.
Afterland is that rare creature, a
ripping tale that neither shies away
from big questions nor interesting
answers. What happens when the
powerless get power? There is
no guarantee that the previously
oppressed will wield it any more
judiciously than those who
oppressed them. It isn’t about the
individuals. It is about the society
they need to maintain. ❚In Afterland, a mother tries
to flee the US with her son
after almost all males dieAA
RON^ MCC
OY/GETT
Y^ I
MAGESA woman’s world
When a pandemic kills almost all the men on Earth, the women
are made monstrous with power, finds Sally Adee
“ There is no guarantee
that the once-oppressed
will wield power any
more judiciously than
their oppressors”Don’t miss
Watch
The Umbrella Academy
returns to Netflix for a
second season on
31 July, scattering the
streaming service’s
most dysfunctional
superpowered siblings
across Dallas, Texas –
and each to a different
historical era.Read
Bunker: Building for
the end times by
explorer and geographer
Bradley Garrett is an
uncomfortably timely
book that looks at the
worldwide trend of
“prepping” for social and
environmental collapse.Watch
Proxima, Alice
Winocour’s much-
anticipated astronaut
drama grounded by the
covid-19 lockdown, is
among the films showing
at Picturehouse cinemas
when they reopen in the
UK on 31 July. Eva Green
and Matt Dillon star.
NETF
LIX;^ D
HARAMSAL
A^ &DARIUS^ FILMS