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After Me Comes the Flood
Elegant, sinister, and psychologically complex, After Me Comes the Flood is the haunting debut novel by the bestselling author of The Essex Serpent and Melmoth.
On a hot summer’s day, John Cole decides to shut his bookshop early, and possibly forever, and drives out of London to see his brother. When his car breaks down on an isolated road, he goes looking for help and finds a dilapidated house. As he approaches, a laughing woman he’s never seen before walks out, addresses him by name and explains she’s been waiting for him. Entering the home, John discovers an enigmatic clan of residents all of whom seem to know who he is and claim they have been waiting for him to arrive. They seem to be waiting for something else, too—something final…
Written before Sarah Perry’s ascension to an internationally bestselling author, After Me Comes the Flood is a spectacular novel of obsession, conviction and providence—a startling investigation of the nature of determination in all senses of the word. Wrote Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered, Perry’s novel “made me think of Fowles’s The Magus, Maxwell’s The Chateau, and Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.” Indeed.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 26, 2014
384 people are currently reading
9172 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Perry
28 books2,121 followersSarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979, and was raised as a Strict Baptist. Having studied English at Anglia Ruskin University she worked as a civil servant before studying for an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Writing and the Gothic at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2004 she won the Spectator's Shiva Naipaul Award for travel writing.
In January 2013 she was Writer-in-Residence at Gladstone's Library. Here she completed the final draft of her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood , which was published by Serpent's Tail in June 2014 to international critical acclaim. It won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award 2014, and was longlisted for the 2014 Guardian First Book Award and nominated for the 2014 Folio Prize. In January and February 2016 Sarah was the UNESCO City of Literature Writer-in-Residence in Prague.
Her second novel, The Essex Serpent , was published by Serpent's Tail in May 2016. It was a number one bestseller in hardback, and was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2016. It was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2017, and was longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2017, the Wellcome Book Prize, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and the New Angle Prize for Literature. It was broadcast on Radio 4 as a Book at Bedtime in April 2017, is being translated into eleven languages, and has been chosen for the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club 2017.
Sarah has spoken at a number of institutions including Gladstone's Library, the Centre of Theological Inquiry at Princeton, and the Anglo-American University in Prague, on subjects including theology, the history and status of friendship in literature, the Gothic, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Her essays have been published in the Guardian and the Spectator, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She reviews fiction for the Guardian and the Financial Times.
She currently lives in Norwich, where she is completing her third novel.
In January 2013 she was Writer-in-Residence at Gladstone's Library. Here she completed the final draft of her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood , which was published by Serpent's Tail in June 2014 to international critical acclaim. It won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award 2014, and was longlisted for the 2014 Guardian First Book Award and nominated for the 2014 Folio Prize. In January and February 2016 Sarah was the UNESCO City of Literature Writer-in-Residence in Prague.
Her second novel, The Essex Serpent , was published by Serpent's Tail in May 2016. It was a number one bestseller in hardback, and was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2016. It was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2017, and was longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2017, the Wellcome Book Prize, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and the New Angle Prize for Literature. It was broadcast on Radio 4 as a Book at Bedtime in April 2017, is being translated into eleven languages, and has been chosen for the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club 2017.
Sarah has spoken at a number of institutions including Gladstone's Library, the Centre of Theological Inquiry at Princeton, and the Anglo-American University in Prague, on subjects including theology, the history and status of friendship in literature, the Gothic, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Her essays have been published in the Guardian and the Spectator, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She reviews fiction for the Guardian and the Financial Times.
She currently lives in Norwich, where she is completing her third novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 749 reviews
January 19, 2015
This was an extremely puzzling novel that by no means lived up to its intriguing blurb...it's dry and meandering and feels much longer than its fairly slight page count. It starts off fine - it's nicely, if simply, written and the mysterious nature of the plot gives it an interesting edge. And then you realize that there's really nothing coming - there's no mystery and no backstory of any real consequence. The characters are somewhere in between likeable and unlikeable, and there's very little depth to their personalities or their motivations.
I'm actually shocked I even finished it, and that's the reason for the second star - there must have been something that kept me turning the pages, although at the moment (a few weeks after finishing it) I can't really recall what that something was.
I'm actually shocked I even finished it, and that's the reason for the second star - there must have been something that kept me turning the pages, although at the moment (a few weeks after finishing it) I can't really recall what that something was.
April 15, 2020
I read this book a long time ago, so this will be a difficult review to write. I suppose I was waiting for a heatwave to hit London so I can be in the right mood to write this and a heatwave is something you will wait for for a long time in the UK. But I did spend half of this week sitting in a puddle of my own sweat, so here we are.
Like the main character I feel an urge to close the shop (I don’t actually have a shop) and fuck off somewhere, get lost and be found by a bunch of strangers who seem to have been waiting for me. This is what happens to John Cole, who goes to visit his brother, gets lost and end up in a strange house with people who know his name and have been expecting him. It’s all very strange and it seems like it’s a place people go to recover and find or lose their faith. The story is set beautifully out of time, somewhere between the times of Biblical plagues and some dystopian future. It’s very en vogue for reviewers to invent new genres when reviewing so I’m going to call it environmental Gothic. And let’s not forget to say ‘claustrophobic’. Apparently, you can’t review this novel without mentioning it was claustrophobic. So yes, definitely claustrophobic. Weirdness prevails.
Of course, Amazon doesn’t have such subtle categories and I believe is putting this book in their thriller section or wherever. It also puts Perry’s new book in the ‘romance’ section which I’m sure is just as ridiculous.
Don’t read this book for the plot and the answers, read it for the atmosphere and the words. It’s half a ghost story, half a Biblical parable. I probably didn’t even understand it really but it doesn’t matter. It’s a brave debut, even if it is not perfect. Despite Amazon’s best efforts it avoids categorisation. Oh, and don’t look for ‘likeable characters you can relate to’. Unless you’re super weird.
Like the main character I feel an urge to close the shop (I don’t actually have a shop) and fuck off somewhere, get lost and be found by a bunch of strangers who seem to have been waiting for me. This is what happens to John Cole, who goes to visit his brother, gets lost and end up in a strange house with people who know his name and have been expecting him. It’s all very strange and it seems like it’s a place people go to recover and find or lose their faith. The story is set beautifully out of time, somewhere between the times of Biblical plagues and some dystopian future. It’s very en vogue for reviewers to invent new genres when reviewing so I’m going to call it environmental Gothic. And let’s not forget to say ‘claustrophobic’. Apparently, you can’t review this novel without mentioning it was claustrophobic. So yes, definitely claustrophobic. Weirdness prevails.
Of course, Amazon doesn’t have such subtle categories and I believe is putting this book in their thriller section or wherever. It also puts Perry’s new book in the ‘romance’ section which I’m sure is just as ridiculous.
Don’t read this book for the plot and the answers, read it for the atmosphere and the words. It’s half a ghost story, half a Biblical parable. I probably didn’t even understand it really but it doesn’t matter. It’s a brave debut, even if it is not perfect. Despite Amazon’s best efforts it avoids categorisation. Oh, and don’t look for ‘likeable characters you can relate to’. Unless you’re super weird.
February 20, 2017
Oh dear.
Pretentious, tedious; wafer-thin characterisation; no beginning, middle or end.
Not a fan.
Pretentious, tedious; wafer-thin characterisation; no beginning, middle or end.
Not a fan.
April 26, 2025
(First read in 2014; reread April 2025.) I was nervous to revisit After Me Comes the Flood. I adored this book unreservedly when I first read it, and remembered it as a favourite, but you only have to look at the average rating to see that it’s not very well regarded. As soon as I cracked it open, though, I fell straight into it again. It’s a book that reminds me (as if I needed a reminder) how interestingly subjective reading actually is. To me this is not only a brilliant, beautiful book, but easily Sarah Perry’s best.
After Me Comes the Flood was Perry’s debut, published three years before the much more successful The Essex Serpent. It presents an instantly intriguing scenario. In the midst of a heatwave, John Cole walks out of the bookshop he owns and sets off on a long drive. When his car breaks down, he knocks on the door of a big house for help… only to be greeted by name and welcomed in, finding that the residents – a strange mixture of individuals whose relationships to one another are obscure – have been waiting for him and have a room prepared.
The way Perry writes these early scenes is sublime, the reader taken alongside John right into the moment, unwilling or unable to disturb the flow of the story that’s unfolding around him. It’s like being pulled down into a dream. And even though it turns out there’s an ordinary (albeit wildly coincidental) reason for the group’s embrace of John, that sense of the dreamlike never quite goes away. Shimmering, oppressive heat; slow-building tension; a vague sense of impending doom.
The story takes place across the course of a week, during which little happens yet everything carries meaning. While there are questions to be answered (who are these people? who’s sending distressing letters to fragile, anxious Alex?), the pace is slow, the atmosphere more important than the action. I loved this measured release of information, the way the reader is kept in the dark much like John is; understanding comes from tiny details, nuances of behaviour. There are some first-novel flaws – John, somewhat unconvincingly, falls in love out of absolutely nowhere; one particular plot beat is an overused trope – but the story holds up despite them, wrapped in its own special magic.
Rereading this reminded me of my experience with Sally Hinchcliffe’s Hare House, a book I completely and utterly adore, but unmistakably one that also felt precisely calibrated for me, so that I am very aware it wouldn’t work in the same way for most other readers. This time, it reminded me a little of Piranesi, too – something to do with how self-contained the story feels, the sense that you can see how the whole thing’s constructed yet that only makes it stronger.
After Me Comes the Flood was Perry’s debut, published three years before the much more successful The Essex Serpent. It presents an instantly intriguing scenario. In the midst of a heatwave, John Cole walks out of the bookshop he owns and sets off on a long drive. When his car breaks down, he knocks on the door of a big house for help… only to be greeted by name and welcomed in, finding that the residents – a strange mixture of individuals whose relationships to one another are obscure – have been waiting for him and have a room prepared.
The way Perry writes these early scenes is sublime, the reader taken alongside John right into the moment, unwilling or unable to disturb the flow of the story that’s unfolding around him. It’s like being pulled down into a dream. And even though it turns out there’s an ordinary (albeit wildly coincidental) reason for the group’s embrace of John, that sense of the dreamlike never quite goes away. Shimmering, oppressive heat; slow-building tension; a vague sense of impending doom.
The story takes place across the course of a week, during which little happens yet everything carries meaning. While there are questions to be answered (who are these people? who’s sending distressing letters to fragile, anxious Alex?), the pace is slow, the atmosphere more important than the action. I loved this measured release of information, the way the reader is kept in the dark much like John is; understanding comes from tiny details, nuances of behaviour. There are some first-novel flaws – John, somewhat unconvincingly, falls in love out of absolutely nowhere; one particular plot beat is an overused trope – but the story holds up despite them, wrapped in its own special magic.
Rereading this reminded me of my experience with Sally Hinchcliffe’s Hare House, a book I completely and utterly adore, but unmistakably one that also felt precisely calibrated for me, so that I am very aware it wouldn’t work in the same way for most other readers. This time, it reminded me a little of Piranesi, too – something to do with how self-contained the story feels, the sense that you can see how the whole thing’s constructed yet that only makes it stronger.
November 24, 2014
I've shaken this book as hard as I can & still the minutes of my life I wasted on it won't fall out. It's such a mess that I can't begin to understand what the original intention of it might have been. Another review compared it to The Secret History. Sweet Jesus. It would be more accurate to compare a lesser-known Candace Bushnell to Pride & Prejudice. Just don't.
January 17, 2019
As in Perry's latest book, The Essex Serpent, After Me Comes The Flood is rich with imagery both lush and ascetic, and characters who are never fully revealed, to themselves or to the reader. The plot, too, is set up as the slow uncovering of a rather sad mystery but (again like The Essex Serpent) is both more and less than one expects, and yet its denouement feels inevitable and fits the overarching narrative like a kid glove.
I've a feeling that Sarah Perry either draws readers in with her elusive symbolism or drives them away. As for me, I like that her ideas stay with me for days after finishing her books, offering up fresh interpretations that did not occur to me while I was reading. Her humour is subtle, too, and I found myself laughing after the fact, as I got some of the jokes (most especially in the form of word play and metaphors made literal) only hours after I'd read them.
I have read a few reviews of this book and of The Essex Serpent which compare Perry's writing to Kafka and, especially Serpent to Dickens. She reminds me of neither. Here is where I have to admit that I am not a Kafka fan, while admiring so many of the writers whom he influenced and being grateful to him for that reason. I understand why his work is brilliant, but I cannot connect with it emotionally. I tend not to like books which appeal only to my intellect. I need the whole package, which includes aesthetic seduction as well as intellectual and emotional. For me, Kafka isn't that; though I recognise this is a personal response and he may affect others quite differently.
After Me Comes The Flood evoked two authors and their works early on in my reading, and the impression stayed with me throughout: Robert Aickman and Shirley Jackson. In tone, setting, existential alienation, physical isolation, sinister foreboding, uneasy dream-states, and Christian and pagan overtones, After Me echoes various aspects of Aickman's entire ouevre. Certain symbols, such as Perry's unused but ever-present meat hooks, a table overladen with food for so few diners, and a house found by a traveller with a broken down car, slipping unwittingly across borders into an enchanted place, were so reminiscent of Aickman's stories The Hospice, The Stains, The View, and Into The Wood that I could not stop thinking of him as I read her. This is a compliment, not a complaint, as I rarely read anyone who sends me into the type of free-floating, fascinated disorientation that Aickman does. *
Jackson's dark sense of humour as well as, specifically, her novel The Sundial were ever present as I read After Me too. The house in Perry's book is similar in so many ways to Jackson's, right down to a misleading sundial, a cloistered group of people who both choose to live there and yet feel unable to leave, too, a prescient childlike figure (an actual child in Jackson's book, but not Perry's), an untrustworthy but indispensable wealthy matriarch; in short, a troupe of characters overflowing with interdependent need and longing, awaiting some final apocalypse that will either redeem or destroy them (maybe both), or maybe never happen at all. In both books, we feel that the fragile tension could shatter like a glass house in a hurricane at any moment, and both authors hold this tension masterfully.
There are many other similarities I could discuss, such as the sense of timelessness and the ambiguity of characters' motives, etc. that resonate throughout Aickman's, Jackson's, and Perry's writings, but I am not writing a thesis, merely expressing my thoughts casually and so far as I hope they might interest other readers.
I do not compare Perry's writing to Dickens', but his name has been invoked regarding The Essex Serpent by more than one reviewer. Personally, I don't see it. Dickens wrote morally compelling narratives rich with characters who delight and appall us still. But, one must notice that his female characters lack any depth whatsoever. He wrote women as one supposes he viewed women: either desirable and nurturing and lovely, or wicked and base. His lovely ones are so pure of heart and sweet of soul they could slip a reader into a diabetic coma. Of course, I love Dickens. But not for the complex richness of his women. Perry's Cora, on the other hand, is a substantial and fascinating woman, and the women in After Me Comes The Flood while representative of particular archetypes playing out their respective roles in an allegoricical tale, suggest more depth than what they are willing or able to reveal and so leave us with a sense of lingering interest and mystery.
I am so looking forward to Perry's next book!
* One cannot mention Aickman's The Hospice or Into The Wood without noting his own admiration of Thomas Mann and his allusions to The Magic Mountain in these stories. Likewise, a fainter but nevertheless audible echo is there in Perry. The original beautiful sanitorium of literature, offering healing and rest for weary souls whilst disconnecting them from the outer world, and drawing them into stifling relations with one another, was surely Mann's Berghof. Timeless, enchanting, and unforgettable.
I've a feeling that Sarah Perry either draws readers in with her elusive symbolism or drives them away. As for me, I like that her ideas stay with me for days after finishing her books, offering up fresh interpretations that did not occur to me while I was reading. Her humour is subtle, too, and I found myself laughing after the fact, as I got some of the jokes (most especially in the form of word play and metaphors made literal) only hours after I'd read them.
I have read a few reviews of this book and of The Essex Serpent which compare Perry's writing to Kafka and, especially Serpent to Dickens. She reminds me of neither. Here is where I have to admit that I am not a Kafka fan, while admiring so many of the writers whom he influenced and being grateful to him for that reason. I understand why his work is brilliant, but I cannot connect with it emotionally. I tend not to like books which appeal only to my intellect. I need the whole package, which includes aesthetic seduction as well as intellectual and emotional. For me, Kafka isn't that; though I recognise this is a personal response and he may affect others quite differently.
After Me Comes The Flood evoked two authors and their works early on in my reading, and the impression stayed with me throughout: Robert Aickman and Shirley Jackson. In tone, setting, existential alienation, physical isolation, sinister foreboding, uneasy dream-states, and Christian and pagan overtones, After Me echoes various aspects of Aickman's entire ouevre. Certain symbols, such as Perry's unused but ever-present meat hooks, a table overladen with food for so few diners, and a house found by a traveller with a broken down car, slipping unwittingly across borders into an enchanted place, were so reminiscent of Aickman's stories The Hospice, The Stains, The View, and Into The Wood that I could not stop thinking of him as I read her. This is a compliment, not a complaint, as I rarely read anyone who sends me into the type of free-floating, fascinated disorientation that Aickman does. *
Jackson's dark sense of humour as well as, specifically, her novel The Sundial were ever present as I read After Me too. The house in Perry's book is similar in so many ways to Jackson's, right down to a misleading sundial, a cloistered group of people who both choose to live there and yet feel unable to leave, too, a prescient childlike figure (an actual child in Jackson's book, but not Perry's), an untrustworthy but indispensable wealthy matriarch; in short, a troupe of characters overflowing with interdependent need and longing, awaiting some final apocalypse that will either redeem or destroy them (maybe both), or maybe never happen at all. In both books, we feel that the fragile tension could shatter like a glass house in a hurricane at any moment, and both authors hold this tension masterfully.
There are many other similarities I could discuss, such as the sense of timelessness and the ambiguity of characters' motives, etc. that resonate throughout Aickman's, Jackson's, and Perry's writings, but I am not writing a thesis, merely expressing my thoughts casually and so far as I hope they might interest other readers.
I do not compare Perry's writing to Dickens', but his name has been invoked regarding The Essex Serpent by more than one reviewer. Personally, I don't see it. Dickens wrote morally compelling narratives rich with characters who delight and appall us still. But, one must notice that his female characters lack any depth whatsoever. He wrote women as one supposes he viewed women: either desirable and nurturing and lovely, or wicked and base. His lovely ones are so pure of heart and sweet of soul they could slip a reader into a diabetic coma. Of course, I love Dickens. But not for the complex richness of his women. Perry's Cora, on the other hand, is a substantial and fascinating woman, and the women in After Me Comes The Flood while representative of particular archetypes playing out their respective roles in an allegoricical tale, suggest more depth than what they are willing or able to reveal and so leave us with a sense of lingering interest and mystery.
I am so looking forward to Perry's next book!
* One cannot mention Aickman's The Hospice or Into The Wood without noting his own admiration of Thomas Mann and his allusions to The Magic Mountain in these stories. Likewise, a fainter but nevertheless audible echo is there in Perry. The original beautiful sanitorium of literature, offering healing and rest for weary souls whilst disconnecting them from the outer world, and drawing them into stifling relations with one another, was surely Mann's Berghof. Timeless, enchanting, and unforgettable.
January 2, 2015
I have just wasted another 20 minutes trying to write a review.
I read the book.
It was readable
I just can't work out the point of it.
Disappointing. But I did finish it.
I read the book.
It was readable
I just can't work out the point of it.
Disappointing. But I did finish it.
November 23, 2014
I have to admit to being a little disappointed with this one. Thats not to say it is a bad book but the blurb seemed to promise something different (in my opinion) to that which it delivered. When I started I thought there was going to be some mystery, perhaps something a little odd going on, but in the end it was all rather mundane.
Having said that, I did get somewhat caught up with this eclectic bunch of characters – John breaks down on his way to his brothers and seeking help in a nearby house, he is disconcerted when they seem to be expecting him- then, well, he stays. It took me a little bit of suspension of disbelief at this point, because although he was feeling rather poorly in the heat, it did seem entirely unrealistic that, if you arrived at a strangers house for reasons that could not at all have been planned, then find that they seem to have been expecting you all along and know your name, you wouldnt think “hang on a minute” and high tail it back to your car toote suite. Maybe its just the horror movie buff in me….
Anyway, once I’d moved passed that I started to become just a little fascinated by the people John encounters in the house – Hester the matriarch, Walker who I’m still not really sure about, Eve the piano player, Elijah the preacher who has lost his faith, Alex who is somewhat odd and Claire, a childlike woman who has a rather strange outlook on life. For a while I was entranced – they danced off the page, not really clarified but appealing none the less. As John becomes embedded into their world, there is some beautiful haunting writing and an uneasy feeling created in the reader that is intelligently done.
But then nothing really happens. Their day to day interaction has a kind of a plot twist running through it to do with the danger of flood and disaster that may or may not be caused by an approaching storm, and some other things I suppose, but it kind of went a bit flat. Which was a shame really, because there was a great deal of potential here.
Even now I’ve finished it (I found the ending to be a bit sudden as well) I’m still not really sure what I think about it. I have since discovered that the author had a strong religious upbringing which explains a lot of religious allegory that threads in and out of the story, but I think perhaps I am not the right audience for this in the end.
Well written, with a good premise, I just didnt feel the execution quite lived up to the promise – however having said that there is a lot here to appeal, one of those “its not you its me” moments when it comes to reading. I just wish that there had been slightly more depth given to some of the characters, it was a “character set piece” if you like, and perhaps too much attention was given to one or two characters over the others which made the whole thing feel a bit disjointed.
Lovely prose though. Can’t really fault that. But not for me.
Happy Reading Folks!
Having said that, I did get somewhat caught up with this eclectic bunch of characters – John breaks down on his way to his brothers and seeking help in a nearby house, he is disconcerted when they seem to be expecting him- then, well, he stays. It took me a little bit of suspension of disbelief at this point, because although he was feeling rather poorly in the heat, it did seem entirely unrealistic that, if you arrived at a strangers house for reasons that could not at all have been planned, then find that they seem to have been expecting you all along and know your name, you wouldnt think “hang on a minute” and high tail it back to your car toote suite. Maybe its just the horror movie buff in me….
Anyway, once I’d moved passed that I started to become just a little fascinated by the people John encounters in the house – Hester the matriarch, Walker who I’m still not really sure about, Eve the piano player, Elijah the preacher who has lost his faith, Alex who is somewhat odd and Claire, a childlike woman who has a rather strange outlook on life. For a while I was entranced – they danced off the page, not really clarified but appealing none the less. As John becomes embedded into their world, there is some beautiful haunting writing and an uneasy feeling created in the reader that is intelligently done.
But then nothing really happens. Their day to day interaction has a kind of a plot twist running through it to do with the danger of flood and disaster that may or may not be caused by an approaching storm, and some other things I suppose, but it kind of went a bit flat. Which was a shame really, because there was a great deal of potential here.
Even now I’ve finished it (I found the ending to be a bit sudden as well) I’m still not really sure what I think about it. I have since discovered that the author had a strong religious upbringing which explains a lot of religious allegory that threads in and out of the story, but I think perhaps I am not the right audience for this in the end.
Well written, with a good premise, I just didnt feel the execution quite lived up to the promise – however having said that there is a lot here to appeal, one of those “its not you its me” moments when it comes to reading. I just wish that there had been slightly more depth given to some of the characters, it was a “character set piece” if you like, and perhaps too much attention was given to one or two characters over the others which made the whole thing feel a bit disjointed.
Lovely prose though. Can’t really fault that. But not for me.
Happy Reading Folks!
September 17, 2017
Anyone who has read many of my reviews will probably have picked up that I am less interested in plot than I am in atmosphere when I am reading a book. What this book perhaps fails to deliver in plot and/or character development, it easily makes up for in atmosphere. It is a debut novel and, as such, it shows a talented writer at the beginning of her public development. I found it one of the most impressive debut novels I have read.
It’s not that the plot and character development are especially weak. The plot isn’t the main thing as far I can tell. John Cole leaves his failing bookshop and heads for Norfolk to visit his brother. On the way, his car breaks down and he finds himself outside a house. The dreamlike nature of the narrative starts to assert itself at this early stage:
”It seemed to me the most real and solid thing I'd ever seen, and at the same time only a trick of my sight in the heat”.
Not only that, but it seems John is expected and how often do you turn up at a house you’ve never visited before only to find you are expected? Except in your dreams, maybe. We quickly discover the reason for this, though. But then there’s the meat hooks, and a broken sundial that tells two times. Everything is disjointed and out of kilter with the “real world”.
In chapters that switch between first person narrative narrated by John and a third person, omniscient narrator, we gradually get to know the other residents of the house and uncover their relationships and we see John’s relationships with different characters evolve. So, we do get character development and I actually liked the elements of mystery that remained around the characters.
The story is full of Biblical imagery, perhaps especially the book of Genesis. There’s a character called Eve, people spend a lot of time walking round a garden, the story takes place over seven days, one chapter starts with the words On the morning of the sixth day…. And there’s always the threat of an imminent flood.
Eadwacer from the Anglo-Saxon poem “Wulf and Eadwacer” becomes a significant motif. This poem is renowned for being difficult to interpret despite being only 19 lines long (or perhaps because it is only 19 lines long). I am not sure of the part that this poem plays in the story other than that it adds to the mysterious atmosphere and the sense that we are not being told everything. A difficult to interpret poem within a difficult to interpret book. But it may be that there is more to it than that - I’d be delighted if someone could elucidate in the comments! I’m probably not the first person to suddenly feel stupid for trying to make an anagram out of the word Eadwacer.
It’s a personal taste thing, but I found this more intriguing and more compelling than Perry’s subsequent novel The Essex Serpent. That second novel was a very enjoyable story to read and was perfect for reading on holiday a few weeks ago. This one ticks more boxes for me with it’s mystery, its atmosphere and its loose ends.
It’s not that the plot and character development are especially weak. The plot isn’t the main thing as far I can tell. John Cole leaves his failing bookshop and heads for Norfolk to visit his brother. On the way, his car breaks down and he finds himself outside a house. The dreamlike nature of the narrative starts to assert itself at this early stage:
”It seemed to me the most real and solid thing I'd ever seen, and at the same time only a trick of my sight in the heat”.
Not only that, but it seems John is expected and how often do you turn up at a house you’ve never visited before only to find you are expected? Except in your dreams, maybe. We quickly discover the reason for this, though. But then there’s the meat hooks, and a broken sundial that tells two times. Everything is disjointed and out of kilter with the “real world”.
In chapters that switch between first person narrative narrated by John and a third person, omniscient narrator, we gradually get to know the other residents of the house and uncover their relationships and we see John’s relationships with different characters evolve. So, we do get character development and I actually liked the elements of mystery that remained around the characters.
The story is full of Biblical imagery, perhaps especially the book of Genesis. There’s a character called Eve, people spend a lot of time walking round a garden, the story takes place over seven days, one chapter starts with the words On the morning of the sixth day…. And there’s always the threat of an imminent flood.
Eadwacer from the Anglo-Saxon poem “Wulf and Eadwacer” becomes a significant motif. This poem is renowned for being difficult to interpret despite being only 19 lines long (or perhaps because it is only 19 lines long). I am not sure of the part that this poem plays in the story other than that it adds to the mysterious atmosphere and the sense that we are not being told everything. A difficult to interpret poem within a difficult to interpret book. But it may be that there is more to it than that - I’d be delighted if someone could elucidate in the comments! I’m probably not the first person to suddenly feel stupid for trying to make an anagram out of the word Eadwacer.
It’s a personal taste thing, but I found this more intriguing and more compelling than Perry’s subsequent novel The Essex Serpent. That second novel was a very enjoyable story to read and was perfect for reading on holiday a few weeks ago. This one ticks more boxes for me with it’s mystery, its atmosphere and its loose ends.
April 12, 2021
Then he smiled in that old frank way I knew and said 'I won't think about it any more. I'll put it away somewhere, and won't take it out again. That's the best way.'
So we walked together across the grass, and our shadows were long and reached in front of us, and behind us the cat came slowly. We could hear Eve playing the "Maple Leaf Rag" much too fast, as Clare calling from a window upstairs, and as we walked I repeated to myself over and over, under my breath: put it away somewhere and don't take it out again.
After Me Comes the Flood was the debut novel from Sarah Perry, now widely feted as the author of The Essex Serpent. At the risk of being the dinner-party bore who claims that a band’s obscure early material was much better than their more famous and commercially successful later works, I have to say that, having read both back-to-back After Me Comes the Flood is actually the more interesting and artistically innovative work, if ultimately much less polished and far from flawless.
Reaching for a comparison I would say Deborah Levy and Ali Smith meet Kazuo Ishiguro, except here vs. Swimming Home and The Accidental, but similarly to The Unconsoled, the stranger appears to be an expected rather than uninvited guest, rather to his own bemusement.
The novel is set in a remote country house hidden away in Thetford Forest (close indeed to where I lived as a child, albeit the forest is relocated rather nearer than it is in reality to the marshlands of the North Norfolk coast), during a stifling summer drought.
Fleeing the heat of London, bookseller John Cole gets lots en-route to his brother’s Norfolk house and, his radiator overheating, comes across the strange house, and goes there seeking help, only to find that the residents, an oddly assorted group of 6 people, are expecting him and even know his name. Indeed a room has been prepared with his clothes and belongings having been sent in advance.
The story unfolds seven days: the biblical resonance is intentional – the penultimate chapter starts "On the morning of the sixth day" – albeit the tension builds towards the remote threat of a potential deluge after the drought breaks, which one character, Alex, worries will cause a dwindling reservoir to burst its banks. And indeed on the sixth day (I was reminded of 1 Kings 18:44):
The sky, empty for thirty five days, was punctuated by a single cloud moving east, shedding white air at its fringes, as solitary as if puffed out of the chimney stack.
The most immediately fascinating of the group is Elijah, in immediate appearance a bearded prophet, who turns out to be a deeply-believing preacher who had one day suddenly lots his faith:
'He found out somehow - he might have counted for all I know - that in the Bible the words or something like it come three hundred and sixty five times.' She drained the rest of her tea with a gulp and said, 'Do you understand? To Elijah it meant only o e thing: thousands of years ago God had personally seen to it that there'd be enough comfort to go round for every day of the year.
Then his youngest daughter came in - they all wore long skirts you know, for the sake of modesty. She said: What about leap years? What about leap years!
The girl said, You've always told me God has ordered everything for my own good. But every leap year, when winter has gone on for too long and we've forgotten the feel of the sun, there'll be one day when there's no word comfort from God.
As Elijah puts it: The rock under my feet turned out to be sand after all and in the end the tide came in. Walker says I'm free, like a dog off its leash. Which is all very well, but what if I run into the road?
The novel immediately presents itself (and arguably the publisher’s blurb implies) something of a mystery. Who are these odd people and how can they have known Cole was coming when he doesn’t know who they are and found their house by accident? As someone remarks, rather tongue in cheek, when mysterious poison pen letters start to arrive:
I keep thinking Holmes will arrive, with Watson following by train...
"I wouldn't have thought so," said John, "Miss Marple perhaps."
But Perry’s intention is very different, and the deliberate disappointing of the reader’s expectation is very effective.
The explanation of how John was expected comes relatively early and is rather dull.
And the nature of the group of people, and what they are doing there in the forest, emerges more slowly but again is not really key to the novel. Indeed Cole, making early conversation for the sake of it, hits on the situation almost by accident:
Sitting with the other men around the table, the whisky bottle between them and the moon passing the empty window, was curiously like being aboard a half-empty ship, forced to find comp at in a stranger's cabin. It reminded John of a pamphlet he'd once bought at auction, a coarse engraving of a ship under full sale printed on the cover.
'I'll tell you something really interesting,' he said rather eagerly, leaning forward. 'Last year, or the year before, I bought a crateful of books that had been left to get damp in a garage somewhere. Most of them were ruined - one of the books even had a kind of fat blind maggot burrowed in its spine - but there were a few things worth having and the best of them was a facsimile of a German poem - from the fifteenth century, I think, though I can't remember who wrote it - called the "Ship of Fools", about a boat put to sea full of madmen. No same man or woman was allowed aboard, except the captain, I suppose, though surely he was mad to take such a crew? At sea of course, they'd do as they please- there's no law and no-one watching, and of no one's watching, who's to say what sane, and what isn't. I didn't read all of it, but I liked the idea, and ever since I've wondered if it ever really happened.'
He paused aware the other men were avoiding his gaze. Walker put out his cigarette and shuffled intently through his hand of cards, and Alex began to gnaw at the scab between his knuckles. John felt something in the room shift and fracture; he said 'I expect I've got it wrong. I often do.'
Instead Perry gives us a fascinating psychological character study of co-dependence between a group of flawed people, including Cole himself, who soon belongs just as much as the rest of them. As one character says of another:
I realised that as long as he was just a little afraid, he'd need me.
Perry still manages to crank up the tension, but not towards any particular end or neat resolution, and the novel is all the more effective for it.
And she makes wonderfully effective use of the haunting and ambiguous ancient-English poem, Wulf and Eadwacer: the full poem (not included in the novel) reads in the translation by Michael R. Burch:
So we walked together across the grass, and our shadows were long and reached in front of us, and behind us the cat came slowly. We could hear Eve playing the "Maple Leaf Rag" much too fast, as Clare calling from a window upstairs, and as we walked I repeated to myself over and over, under my breath: put it away somewhere and don't take it out again.
After Me Comes the Flood was the debut novel from Sarah Perry, now widely feted as the author of The Essex Serpent. At the risk of being the dinner-party bore who claims that a band’s obscure early material was much better than their more famous and commercially successful later works, I have to say that, having read both back-to-back After Me Comes the Flood is actually the more interesting and artistically innovative work, if ultimately much less polished and far from flawless.
Reaching for a comparison I would say Deborah Levy and Ali Smith meet Kazuo Ishiguro, except here vs. Swimming Home and The Accidental, but similarly to The Unconsoled, the stranger appears to be an expected rather than uninvited guest, rather to his own bemusement.
The novel is set in a remote country house hidden away in Thetford Forest (close indeed to where I lived as a child, albeit the forest is relocated rather nearer than it is in reality to the marshlands of the North Norfolk coast), during a stifling summer drought.
Fleeing the heat of London, bookseller John Cole gets lots en-route to his brother’s Norfolk house and, his radiator overheating, comes across the strange house, and goes there seeking help, only to find that the residents, an oddly assorted group of 6 people, are expecting him and even know his name. Indeed a room has been prepared with his clothes and belongings having been sent in advance.
The story unfolds seven days: the biblical resonance is intentional – the penultimate chapter starts "On the morning of the sixth day" – albeit the tension builds towards the remote threat of a potential deluge after the drought breaks, which one character, Alex, worries will cause a dwindling reservoir to burst its banks. And indeed on the sixth day (I was reminded of 1 Kings 18:44):
The sky, empty for thirty five days, was punctuated by a single cloud moving east, shedding white air at its fringes, as solitary as if puffed out of the chimney stack.
The most immediately fascinating of the group is Elijah, in immediate appearance a bearded prophet, who turns out to be a deeply-believing preacher who had one day suddenly lots his faith:
'He found out somehow - he might have counted for all I know - that in the Bible the words or something like it come three hundred and sixty five times.' She drained the rest of her tea with a gulp and said, 'Do you understand? To Elijah it meant only o e thing: thousands of years ago God had personally seen to it that there'd be enough comfort to go round for every day of the year.
Then his youngest daughter came in - they all wore long skirts you know, for the sake of modesty. She said: What about leap years? What about leap years!
The girl said, You've always told me God has ordered everything for my own good. But every leap year, when winter has gone on for too long and we've forgotten the feel of the sun, there'll be one day when there's no word comfort from God.
As Elijah puts it: The rock under my feet turned out to be sand after all and in the end the tide came in. Walker says I'm free, like a dog off its leash. Which is all very well, but what if I run into the road?
The novel immediately presents itself (and arguably the publisher’s blurb implies) something of a mystery. Who are these odd people and how can they have known Cole was coming when he doesn’t know who they are and found their house by accident? As someone remarks, rather tongue in cheek, when mysterious poison pen letters start to arrive:
I keep thinking Holmes will arrive, with Watson following by train...
"I wouldn't have thought so," said John, "Miss Marple perhaps."
But Perry’s intention is very different, and the deliberate disappointing of the reader’s expectation is very effective.
The explanation of how John was expected comes relatively early and is rather dull.
And the nature of the group of people, and what they are doing there in the forest, emerges more slowly but again is not really key to the novel. Indeed Cole, making early conversation for the sake of it, hits on the situation almost by accident:
Sitting with the other men around the table, the whisky bottle between them and the moon passing the empty window, was curiously like being aboard a half-empty ship, forced to find comp at in a stranger's cabin. It reminded John of a pamphlet he'd once bought at auction, a coarse engraving of a ship under full sale printed on the cover.
'I'll tell you something really interesting,' he said rather eagerly, leaning forward. 'Last year, or the year before, I bought a crateful of books that had been left to get damp in a garage somewhere. Most of them were ruined - one of the books even had a kind of fat blind maggot burrowed in its spine - but there were a few things worth having and the best of them was a facsimile of a German poem - from the fifteenth century, I think, though I can't remember who wrote it - called the "Ship of Fools", about a boat put to sea full of madmen. No same man or woman was allowed aboard, except the captain, I suppose, though surely he was mad to take such a crew? At sea of course, they'd do as they please- there's no law and no-one watching, and of no one's watching, who's to say what sane, and what isn't. I didn't read all of it, but I liked the idea, and ever since I've wondered if it ever really happened.'
He paused aware the other men were avoiding his gaze. Walker put out his cigarette and shuffled intently through his hand of cards, and Alex began to gnaw at the scab between his knuckles. John felt something in the room shift and fracture; he said 'I expect I've got it wrong. I often do.'
Instead Perry gives us a fascinating psychological character study of co-dependence between a group of flawed people, including Cole himself, who soon belongs just as much as the rest of them. As one character says of another:
I realised that as long as he was just a little afraid, he'd need me.
Perry still manages to crank up the tension, but not towards any particular end or neat resolution, and the novel is all the more effective for it.
And she makes wonderfully effective use of the haunting and ambiguous ancient-English poem, Wulf and Eadwacer: the full poem (not included in the novel) reads in the translation by Michael R. Burch:
To my people he's prey, a pariah.Recommended - although not necessarily for fans of The Essex Serpent, more for people who thought Hot Milk was vastly superior to His Bloody Project and indeed the rest of the Booker 2016 shortlist.
They'll rip him to shreds, should he show his face.
It is otherwise with us.
Wulf's on one island; I'm on another.
His island's a fortress, fastened by fens.
There are fierce men on this island.
They'll rip him to shreds, should he show his face.
It is otherwise with us.
My heart hounded Wulf in his wanderings.
But whenever it rained, while I wept
the bold warrior came; he took me in his arms:
good feelings for him, but for me loathsome!
Wulf, O, my Wulf, my ache for you
has made me sick; your infrequent visits
have left me famished, deprived of real meat.
Have you heard, Eadwacer? A wolf has borne
our wretched whelp to the woods!
One can easily sever what never was one:
our song together.
May 14, 2021
This was the debut novel of the author of “Essex Serpent” and “Melmoth” – a Norwich based author having been bought up in a Strict and Peculiar Baptist church in Chelmsford.
In 2014, in an article introducing the then-to-be-debut author the Norfolk newspaper the EDP accurately described it as set in a “slightly off-kilter Norfolk, a merging of Thetford Forest and the salt marshes of the north coast” – something which particularly resonates for me having been bought up a dozen or so miles North of Thetford Forest and now spending much of my time a dozen or so miles south of the North coast salt marshes: the book therefore representing a merger of my own Norfolk.
The book has the same Gothic feel as her other two novels – with the “off kilter” idea extending much further than the landscape
Both her second novels had complex plots and memorable characters. Further, alongside their more gothic and fantastical elements, they had a strong grounding in real life people and events.
And both of those are in contrast to this novel – one which perhaps serves as the author exploring her themes (particularly around religious faith and doubt) that appears in her later novels.
The plot can at best be described as perfunctory and can be barely seen as anything other than a pure device and one which the author quickly discards before moving on to her real interest of themes and ideas.
In the middle of a Summer drought, John Cole shuts his bookshop (which seems entirely bereft of customers) and drives to Norfolk to visit his brother. Getting lots in a pine forest he stops at an isolated grand house where it seems he is expected. He quickly works out that it was in fact a Jon Coules who was expected but having been interested in the welcome he receives decides not to say anything.
The group he joins is a rather odd interconnected group who it emerges assembled as part of some form of rest home for patients with mental or stress issues and which have now reunited around the houses owner Hester.
The group includes a troubled but strangely charismatic boy Alex (incidentally we “know” he draws others to him as we are told he does, to this reader he was a very uninteresting character – I was reminded I have to say of the same being true for the very different Cora in “Essex Serpent”)
It also includes Elijah – an ex preacher who suffered a sudden and disorientating loss of faith. Religious imagery (another character called Eve, seven days, the threat of an imminent flood – the book’s title is more Noah than Louis XV based, various biblical pages used as a wind detector etc) is woven through the book as is the rather enigmatic Ancient-English poem “Wulf and Eadwacer”. Sin/doom/judgement are woven through the story as is (at least for me as a Christian) a rather tragic combination of lapsed faith and atheism which I felt inevitably lead to the aimlessness of and sadness at the heart of the characters’ lives.
The book is told in a mix of first party accounts by John (which are passages he transcribes in notebooks) and a third party omniscient narrator roaming around the other characters and uncovering something of their past and their current motivations.
The author has said that one thing that inspired the book was the many Bible ideas of love and the community gives her the ability to explore this idea.
Overall I think this is a novel which may actually appeal more to fans of more esoteric literary fiction than her better known novels, but less to the many fans of the latter other than as a way of tracing her development as an author.
I was somewhere in the middle There is a lot of very good and literary writing in this novel.
At the same time though I have to say it read exactly like the end result of a Creative Writing course – with a number of extremely well crafted scenes, sketches and set pieces rather unevenly assembled into a novel. A key example of this is the most Norfolk (in fact really the only Norfolk) based part of the story – an incident that occurs with a young boy and Alex on a wide beach and with an abandoned boat on nearby mudflats (a real boat which the author knows) – this very much felt like a short story which was then moulded into the novel.
It also has classic if not almost mandatory first novel touches - for example borrowing a rather cliched genre device (here anonymous poison pen letters) with a character then remarking “this is like something in a [genre] novel”
I was also very much struck while I read the novel that this kind of “more literary” novel writing is on one level easier than more traditional novel writing – as things like coherence in plot and in characters, lack of any real research and so on can rather be discarded – in fact their very absence is seen as a positive.
But overall a fascinating insight into the author’s early development.
I purchased a copy of this book from the nearby independent Bookshop – Holt Bookshop (https://www.holtbookshop.co.uk/) which has a fabulous selection of local books
In 2014, in an article introducing the then-to-be-debut author the Norfolk newspaper the EDP accurately described it as set in a “slightly off-kilter Norfolk, a merging of Thetford Forest and the salt marshes of the north coast” – something which particularly resonates for me having been bought up a dozen or so miles North of Thetford Forest and now spending much of my time a dozen or so miles south of the North coast salt marshes: the book therefore representing a merger of my own Norfolk.
The book has the same Gothic feel as her other two novels – with the “off kilter” idea extending much further than the landscape
Both her second novels had complex plots and memorable characters. Further, alongside their more gothic and fantastical elements, they had a strong grounding in real life people and events.
And both of those are in contrast to this novel – one which perhaps serves as the author exploring her themes (particularly around religious faith and doubt) that appears in her later novels.
The plot can at best be described as perfunctory and can be barely seen as anything other than a pure device and one which the author quickly discards before moving on to her real interest of themes and ideas.
In the middle of a Summer drought, John Cole shuts his bookshop (which seems entirely bereft of customers) and drives to Norfolk to visit his brother. Getting lots in a pine forest he stops at an isolated grand house where it seems he is expected. He quickly works out that it was in fact a Jon Coules who was expected but having been interested in the welcome he receives decides not to say anything.
The group he joins is a rather odd interconnected group who it emerges assembled as part of some form of rest home for patients with mental or stress issues and which have now reunited around the houses owner Hester.
The group includes a troubled but strangely charismatic boy Alex (incidentally we “know” he draws others to him as we are told he does, to this reader he was a very uninteresting character – I was reminded I have to say of the same being true for the very different Cora in “Essex Serpent”)
It also includes Elijah – an ex preacher who suffered a sudden and disorientating loss of faith. Religious imagery (another character called Eve, seven days, the threat of an imminent flood – the book’s title is more Noah than Louis XV based, various biblical pages used as a wind detector etc) is woven through the book as is the rather enigmatic Ancient-English poem “Wulf and Eadwacer”. Sin/doom/judgement are woven through the story as is (at least for me as a Christian) a rather tragic combination of lapsed faith and atheism which I felt inevitably lead to the aimlessness of and sadness at the heart of the characters’ lives.
The book is told in a mix of first party accounts by John (which are passages he transcribes in notebooks) and a third party omniscient narrator roaming around the other characters and uncovering something of their past and their current motivations.
The author has said that one thing that inspired the book was the many Bible ideas of love and the community gives her the ability to explore this idea.
Overall I think this is a novel which may actually appeal more to fans of more esoteric literary fiction than her better known novels, but less to the many fans of the latter other than as a way of tracing her development as an author.
I was somewhere in the middle There is a lot of very good and literary writing in this novel.
At the same time though I have to say it read exactly like the end result of a Creative Writing course – with a number of extremely well crafted scenes, sketches and set pieces rather unevenly assembled into a novel. A key example of this is the most Norfolk (in fact really the only Norfolk) based part of the story – an incident that occurs with a young boy and Alex on a wide beach and with an abandoned boat on nearby mudflats (a real boat which the author knows) – this very much felt like a short story which was then moulded into the novel.
It also has classic if not almost mandatory first novel touches - for example borrowing a rather cliched genre device (here anonymous poison pen letters) with a character then remarking “this is like something in a [genre] novel”
I was also very much struck while I read the novel that this kind of “more literary” novel writing is on one level easier than more traditional novel writing – as things like coherence in plot and in characters, lack of any real research and so on can rather be discarded – in fact their very absence is seen as a positive.
But overall a fascinating insight into the author’s early development.
I purchased a copy of this book from the nearby independent Bookshop – Holt Bookshop (https://www.holtbookshop.co.uk/) which has a fabulous selection of local books
December 29, 2018
A slightly odd one this, somewhat short in the plot department, but very nuanced, with more going on than meets the eye. It is set in a scorching hot summer: John Cole decides to leave his bookshop and visit his brother. His car breaks down on the way and he looks for help (the setting is Norfolk). He finds a rambling old house, the inhabitants appear to know his name and to be expecting him, inviting him in and showing him to a room. This is the weakest part of the book as most people at this point would have explained the mistake, John just goes with the flow. The members of the household are Hester (in her 60s and described as maternal and ugly, something else I had a problem with), Elijah (an ex-preacher who has lost his faith), Clare and Alex (red haired twins, who act and behave younger than they are), Eve (plays the piano passionately) and Walker (chain smoker who appears attached to Eve). It is not clear what sort of community it is and there is a sort of suggestion that it may be related to mental health.
There is a lot more going on here and it is worth remembering that Perry comes from a very strict religious background and she is using some of her knowledge. The book is set over seven days and if you were wondering whether there was a link to the creation myth:
“On the morning of the sixth day …”
Opens day six! There is a reservoir and dam very close and at the end of the book the heatwave ends with a heavy storm, throwing in the flood myth as well. There is also a running reference through the book to the Anglo-Saxon poem “Wulf and Eadwacer”, always difficult to interpret, but here basically love is a cage and nothing is what it seems. There is a sense of impending doom, but throughout John appears to be rather confused, not surprisingly as he is with a group of strangers. But John just goes with the flow:
‘I know. And I don’t know which would be worst. Isn’t it odd,’ she said, smiling: ‘You turned up and I never for a minute thought it might be you, though even as strangers go, you’re fairly strange.’ Much later John was to remember that phrase, and wonder why it had felt so like an unexpected touch on the arm. Pressing her hands against the dip in her spine and turning her face to the sun she said, ‘Let’s not talk about it anymore.’ Then she ran to peer at the shadow on the broken sundial, swore beneath her breath, and vanished into the cool dark house. Clare stood, examining a bitten-down thumbnail, while the sound of a piano played in intricate swift patterns reached them across the lawn.
‘How did she know the time,’ said John, when the sundial’s broken?’
The book is full of scenes like that and the whole does seem to be a little out of time. There are no mobiles or computers, in fact it could be past, present or future. It is soon clear that John has been mistaken for someone else, Jon Coules, but it is still rather Kafkaesque. The other inhabitants met at a psychiatric convalescent home called St Judes and sort of migrated to their present spot.
The description of Elijah’s loss of faith resonated with me, as I went through a similar process almost thirty years ago. There is also a sharp analysis of the issues surrounding paedophilia current today with a well-constructed incident, all adding to the sense of impending doom. Perry focuses on odd character traits and each character has depth. John is very much an observer but he also affects events as well. This is an interesting novel, confused at times, but a lot to think about.
There is a lot more going on here and it is worth remembering that Perry comes from a very strict religious background and she is using some of her knowledge. The book is set over seven days and if you were wondering whether there was a link to the creation myth:
“On the morning of the sixth day …”
Opens day six! There is a reservoir and dam very close and at the end of the book the heatwave ends with a heavy storm, throwing in the flood myth as well. There is also a running reference through the book to the Anglo-Saxon poem “Wulf and Eadwacer”, always difficult to interpret, but here basically love is a cage and nothing is what it seems. There is a sense of impending doom, but throughout John appears to be rather confused, not surprisingly as he is with a group of strangers. But John just goes with the flow:
‘I know. And I don’t know which would be worst. Isn’t it odd,’ she said, smiling: ‘You turned up and I never for a minute thought it might be you, though even as strangers go, you’re fairly strange.’ Much later John was to remember that phrase, and wonder why it had felt so like an unexpected touch on the arm. Pressing her hands against the dip in her spine and turning her face to the sun she said, ‘Let’s not talk about it anymore.’ Then she ran to peer at the shadow on the broken sundial, swore beneath her breath, and vanished into the cool dark house. Clare stood, examining a bitten-down thumbnail, while the sound of a piano played in intricate swift patterns reached them across the lawn.
‘How did she know the time,’ said John, when the sundial’s broken?’
The book is full of scenes like that and the whole does seem to be a little out of time. There are no mobiles or computers, in fact it could be past, present or future. It is soon clear that John has been mistaken for someone else, Jon Coules, but it is still rather Kafkaesque. The other inhabitants met at a psychiatric convalescent home called St Judes and sort of migrated to their present spot.
The description of Elijah’s loss of faith resonated with me, as I went through a similar process almost thirty years ago. There is also a sharp analysis of the issues surrounding paedophilia current today with a well-constructed incident, all adding to the sense of impending doom. Perry focuses on odd character traits and each character has depth. John is very much an observer but he also affects events as well. This is an interesting novel, confused at times, but a lot to think about.
March 24, 2015
I found this book absolutely astonishing. In tone it reminded me of W.G. Sebald - a beguiling mixture of clarity and strangeness. Don't be put off by the slightly slow start - soon I was unable to put this down, and read the last three-quarters in one sitting. The characters, and their relationships, are marvellously realised, and the growing sense of menace and tension is nearly unbearable. It's been a week since I finished this book, and I still can't stop thinking about it. One of my absolute favourite recent novels - thoroughly impressive. I can't wait to read Sarah Perry's next novel.
August 7, 2019
Read: August 2019
Rating: 1/5 stars
I found this to be such a disappointment after reading The Essex Serpent, which I thought was excellent. I struggled with the lack of plot, lack of likeable or relatable characters and the writing style - switching from first to third person perspective and back again.
In the end I abandoned this book at 58% so I cannot comment on whether the plot improved in the second half but I don’t plan on finishing it to find out!
Rating: 1/5 stars
I found this to be such a disappointment after reading The Essex Serpent, which I thought was excellent. I struggled with the lack of plot, lack of likeable or relatable characters and the writing style - switching from first to third person perspective and back again.
In the end I abandoned this book at 58% so I cannot comment on whether the plot improved in the second half but I don’t plan on finishing it to find out!
July 19, 2014
From its initial synopsis, this book had a lot of potential. A man walks out on his life, gets lost in the woods, ends up stumbling into a seemingly-abandoned mansion. But when he gets there, he learns that the house's inhabitants have been expecting him, know his name, and have a room set up just for him. The house and its gaggle of misfits are full of mysteries and idiosyncracies, and there are hints of something sinister going on under the surface, waiting to be uncovered...
...Except they're not. The few glimpses of intrigue and mystery are bogged down in page upon page of dull characters, go-nowhere conversations and bland, heavy-handed allegory. The back of the book tells me the author was raised in a very Christian household, and the book is shot through with associated imagery - one of the characters is your standard "preacher who lost his faith" even.
What frustrated me about the book is that there were moments of genuine interest and a few haunting passages, but they were so swamped by blandness that it was a chore to get through. Maybe I'm just not the right audience for this book, but it did very little for me.
...Except they're not. The few glimpses of intrigue and mystery are bogged down in page upon page of dull characters, go-nowhere conversations and bland, heavy-handed allegory. The back of the book tells me the author was raised in a very Christian household, and the book is shot through with associated imagery - one of the characters is your standard "preacher who lost his faith" even.
What frustrated me about the book is that there were moments of genuine interest and a few haunting passages, but they were so swamped by blandness that it was a chore to get through. Maybe I'm just not the right audience for this book, but it did very little for me.
June 23, 2018
The first few pages of the novel were promising. A man, John, who owns a bookstore with few or no customers, gets into his car one day and drives away from London. Then he has car trouble, and goes off looking for help. I pushed my way through this book because it was a monthly choice of one my GR groups, and I had bought it. I loved The Essex Serpent and I must say that Perry has grown tremendously as a writer since her first novel. Some readers loved this novel and took to the meandering, and at times, unrevealing prose. I don't demand a novel with a rich plot, and very much appreciate novels that simply deliver characters, and atmosphere. These characters however confused me for over half the book. In addition to John, there were 6 people living in the house he wanders into. I wasn't ever quite sure who was who although there were clues. I am not sure what happened at the end either. At most this was 2.5 stars for me and I am not going to round up to 3.
August 20, 2020
Sooo...it’s a bad sign when you dread picking a book back up and when you have to reward yourself just for finishing it. Mine was: ‘okay Laura, if you finish this book in the next 3 days you can go buy two new books’. Then, 3 days later: ‘If you finish this at all, one book’. I pride myself on only ever having DNF’d two books and my determination to keep that number the same was the only thing that got me through this meandering, plotless, sleep inducing (even for the worst insomniac) book. I’m bummed as I’ve heard great things about The Essex Serpent. However, while this is just being released in the US, it was actually written before Sarah Perry’s other works Melmoth and The Essex Serpent so I’m hopeful that it only gets better from here. With that in mind, I still plan on giving her another try...someday. I won this book in a goodreads giveaway.
August 11, 2015
(1.5) Not quite an allegory, this still suffers from that genre’s pitfalls, such as one-dimensional characters. Perry has been open about her own strict religious background. Like her character Elijah, a former preacher who lost his faith, she grew up on a diet of Victorian hymns and The Pilgrim’s Progress. Her deep familiarity with Christian texts comes through in the often liturgical language. She offers striking commentary on post-Christian culture and the enduring importance of religious language, yet the novel is a disappointment nonetheless. Moreover, the sentence structure and punctuation are frequently maddening.
(Full review in December 2014/January 2015 issue of Third Way magazine.)
(Full review in December 2014/January 2015 issue of Third Way magazine.)
June 21, 2022
I won this book in a goodreads drawing.
This is a hard book to categorize. It isn't really scary, but it has a dream like quality that reminds me of Lovecraft or Dunsinay, so I put it in the horror category.
An owner of a used bookstore closes his shop and takes a drive for no discernible reason, and winds up at a house populated by a strange laughing woman.
I found the book rather odd. I wasn't sure whether it was supposed to be scary or not.
This is a hard book to categorize. It isn't really scary, but it has a dream like quality that reminds me of Lovecraft or Dunsinay, so I put it in the horror category.
An owner of a used bookstore closes his shop and takes a drive for no discernible reason, and winds up at a house populated by a strange laughing woman.
I found the book rather odd. I wasn't sure whether it was supposed to be scary or not.
November 28, 2014
ARC for review.
"'But it need not mean anything, I think - it's not necessary to understand everything.'"
This rather sums up my feelings about this lovely little book - it's quite hard to get a handle on what is happening, at first, and by the time things become a bit more clear I was completely caught up in the dreamlike quality of the narrative which reminded me a bit of Fowles's wonderful [book: The Magus). The use of shifting points of view allow us to follow both our narrator, John, as well as the other inhabitants of the house - Elijah, Alex, Clare, Eve, Walker and Hester and how each arrived at this place. Both the story (John becomes lost and happens upon...this group) and the prose itself are slow and gentle, as if seen through the haze of the eternal hot summer day which makes up the majority of the book. It's not an easy book to explain, but one which I enjoyed.
"'But it need not mean anything, I think - it's not necessary to understand everything.'"
This rather sums up my feelings about this lovely little book - it's quite hard to get a handle on what is happening, at first, and by the time things become a bit more clear I was completely caught up in the dreamlike quality of the narrative which reminded me a bit of Fowles's wonderful [book: The Magus). The use of shifting points of view allow us to follow both our narrator, John, as well as the other inhabitants of the house - Elijah, Alex, Clare, Eve, Walker and Hester and how each arrived at this place. Both the story (John becomes lost and happens upon...this group) and the prose itself are slow and gentle, as if seen through the haze of the eternal hot summer day which makes up the majority of the book. It's not an easy book to explain, but one which I enjoyed.
January 10, 2018
The intriguing premise of Sarah Perry's After Me Comes the Flood is as follows: 'What if you walked out of your life only to find another one was already waiting for you?' Heralded 'elegant, gently sinister and psychologically complex', the novel holds instant appeal for fans of books like Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, and of authors such as Sarah Waters.
The protagonist of the piece is John Cole, a lonely man who decides to leave his life behind him and join his brother at his secluded house in rural Norfolk. Whilst driving away from the neglected bookshop which he owns in London, his car - rather predictably, one may think - breaks down, and he finds himself lost. Searching for help, he stumbles upon a grand house: 'It seemed to me the most real and solid thing I'd ever seen, and at the same time only a trick of my sight in the heat'. John is soon welcomed with opened arms by the odd community of people within, who seem to have been expecting him all along: 'I ought really to have been afraid of the strangeness and the dark and the insistent child, and those appalling meat hooks hanging from their chains, but instead it all seemed so absurd, and so like something in a novel, that I began to laugh'.
Throughout, Perry uses two differing voices - the first person perspective of John, who is writing an account of his time in his house, and an omniscient third person narrative. John's voice drawns one in from the outset: 'I'm writing this in a stranger's room on a broken chair at an old school desk. The chair creaks if I move, and so I must keep very still'. He goes on to say, 'I wish I could use some other voice to write this story down. I wish I could take all the books that I've loved best and borrow better words than these, but I've got to make do with an empty notebook and a man who never had a tale to tell and doesn't know how to begin except for the beginning'.
Perry manages to set the oppressive tone of the book almost as soon as it begins: 'I've been listening for footsteps on the stairs or voices in the garden, but there's only the sound of a household keeping quiet. They gave me too much drink - there's a kind of buzzing in my ears and if I close my eyes they sting'. On the whole, After Me Came the Flood is very well written, and the descriptions which Perry gives of her characters are particularly striking. Hester, for example, the woman who appears to be in charge of the house, 'seemed poorly assembled, as though she'd been put together from leftover pieces - her eyes set under a deeply lined forehead, her nose crooked like a child's drawing of a witch, her skin thick and coarse'.
After Me Came the Flood becomes unsettling rather quickly, and at times it takes quite unexpected turns. A real sense of place is built, and the first half of the multi-layered novel is very engrossing indeed. At around this point, however, the religious elements which have previously been touched upon serve only to saturate the entire plot, and cause the whole to become rather plodding in its pace. The suspense is lost altogether, and it never really picks up again. The denouement is also rather predictable. All of these elements sadly add an unfortunate stain to what would otherwise be an intriguing and well driven novel.
The protagonist of the piece is John Cole, a lonely man who decides to leave his life behind him and join his brother at his secluded house in rural Norfolk. Whilst driving away from the neglected bookshop which he owns in London, his car - rather predictably, one may think - breaks down, and he finds himself lost. Searching for help, he stumbles upon a grand house: 'It seemed to me the most real and solid thing I'd ever seen, and at the same time only a trick of my sight in the heat'. John is soon welcomed with opened arms by the odd community of people within, who seem to have been expecting him all along: 'I ought really to have been afraid of the strangeness and the dark and the insistent child, and those appalling meat hooks hanging from their chains, but instead it all seemed so absurd, and so like something in a novel, that I began to laugh'.
Throughout, Perry uses two differing voices - the first person perspective of John, who is writing an account of his time in his house, and an omniscient third person narrative. John's voice drawns one in from the outset: 'I'm writing this in a stranger's room on a broken chair at an old school desk. The chair creaks if I move, and so I must keep very still'. He goes on to say, 'I wish I could use some other voice to write this story down. I wish I could take all the books that I've loved best and borrow better words than these, but I've got to make do with an empty notebook and a man who never had a tale to tell and doesn't know how to begin except for the beginning'.
Perry manages to set the oppressive tone of the book almost as soon as it begins: 'I've been listening for footsteps on the stairs or voices in the garden, but there's only the sound of a household keeping quiet. They gave me too much drink - there's a kind of buzzing in my ears and if I close my eyes they sting'. On the whole, After Me Came the Flood is very well written, and the descriptions which Perry gives of her characters are particularly striking. Hester, for example, the woman who appears to be in charge of the house, 'seemed poorly assembled, as though she'd been put together from leftover pieces - her eyes set under a deeply lined forehead, her nose crooked like a child's drawing of a witch, her skin thick and coarse'.
After Me Came the Flood becomes unsettling rather quickly, and at times it takes quite unexpected turns. A real sense of place is built, and the first half of the multi-layered novel is very engrossing indeed. At around this point, however, the religious elements which have previously been touched upon serve only to saturate the entire plot, and cause the whole to become rather plodding in its pace. The suspense is lost altogether, and it never really picks up again. The denouement is also rather predictable. All of these elements sadly add an unfortunate stain to what would otherwise be an intriguing and well driven novel.
May 9, 2020
This book… ugh. I think I expected a mystery or at least something eventually happening. I did finish it (surprisingly) simply because 1. It was short and 2. I wanted to see if there was a point in the end. Sadly, there was not. Maybe I just didn’t understand it or maybe I expected the wrong type of book due to the blurb seeming to promise something different. The author is a good writer and creates an uneasy atmosphere with tons of symbolism and unique characters. However, the novel itself is dry, tedious, and meandering with no real depth or purpose. Basically, “After Me Comes the Flood” has a great atmosphere/description but lacks in plot and character development. It was readable, just not enjoyable, but I did give it a second star since I did finish it.
April 6, 2016
A disappointing novel considering the rave reviews it has.received. I couldn't relate to any of the characters, especially the main one. Their back stories were far too faintly sketched in. The narrative lacked any tension and the claustrophobic enclosed atmosphere was effectively described but not totally convincing.
July 19, 2021
I had my hopes up for this audiobook, that I would enjoy it more then the Essex serpent but was serverly disappointed in it and don't want to bother finishing it. Wasn't in love in the Essex serpent either but think it was at least 3 stars. Have the next book left, Malmoth I think to read. But can't say I'm excited for it
June 24, 2015
This starts off well but quickly turns meh...... I think the general theme is loss of faith but it is testamony to how meh the whole book is that this conclusion is merely speculative. The blurb is interesting, but is possibly talking about another book. Not great.
February 3, 2024
Amazing title, shame it was wasted on a book where absolutely nothing happens
April 26, 2025
This is one of the oldest books on my TBR (10+ years) and honestly, it could have stayed there another 10.
Literally nothing happens in this book. I’m ngl I skim read the second half of it because literally nothing happened and I had no idea what I was reading. Like the blurb makes it sound cryptic and alluring but it was only cryptic as I’m not sure the author even knew what she was writing.
Thrillers aren’t really my thing anyway, but this book has just solidified I won’t be reading another any time soon. Bored me to tears.
I always see The Essex Serpent in charity shops and perhaps now I know why. I didn’t like her writing, it was long and meandering and apparently Perry is allergic to commas. It’s a no from me dawg.
Literally nothing happens in this book. I’m ngl I skim read the second half of it because literally nothing happened and I had no idea what I was reading. Like the blurb makes it sound cryptic and alluring but it was only cryptic as I’m not sure the author even knew what she was writing.
Thrillers aren’t really my thing anyway, but this book has just solidified I won’t be reading another any time soon. Bored me to tears.
I always see The Essex Serpent in charity shops and perhaps now I know why. I didn’t like her writing, it was long and meandering and apparently Perry is allergic to commas. It’s a no from me dawg.
December 18, 2015
The reviews of this book on Goodreads are generally negative, complaining about the lack of a traditional plot or the unravelling and explanation of a mystery.
They miss the point.
What I enjoyed about this first novel from Sarah Perry is her ability to describe the intricate nuances of relationships and conversation.
The first half of the book is intriguing and, as the light of understanding dawns, the reader is able to see each character in a new light.
This isn't entertainment but it is beautiful prose and a thoughtful examination of just which side of the asylum wall we all populate.
They miss the point.
What I enjoyed about this first novel from Sarah Perry is her ability to describe the intricate nuances of relationships and conversation.
The first half of the book is intriguing and, as the light of understanding dawns, the reader is able to see each character in a new light.
This isn't entertainment but it is beautiful prose and a thoughtful examination of just which side of the asylum wall we all populate.
December 19, 2018
Considering the low Goodreads rating (although really, 2.91 is not that far away from a 3!), I’m quite happy to report that this book wasn’t the shit show I was expecting 😂 I loved the constant undertone of unease and the oppressive atmosphere as we wait for the storm to hit. I also enjoy it when a book features a cast of seemingly random characters and we get to see how they all came to fit together in their own dysfunctional way. It started to lose its tightness towards the end, and it’s not that memorable, but really not a bad book in my opinion!
March 6, 2015
I'm afraid that this is one of those rare books that I wish I'd stopped reading, but I persevered to the end (I'm always reluctant to abandon a book). I didn't like any of the characters, and the fact that nothing really happens doesn't help matters. Really didn't enjoy it.
Not for me.
Not for me.
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