Speculative Fiction Junkie

Conrad Williams

Post-Apocalyptic tales are among my absolute favorites, and when Colin of Highlander's Books, one of my favorite review blogs, recommended a post-apocalyptic tale by an author whose work I'd been meaning to delve into anyway, I decided to give it a go. The book in question was One and the author was Conrad Williams.

One is the story of a man's journey in search of his son in the wake of an apocalyptic event that takes him from beneath the North Sea all the way to London. The book is divided into two halves with the first detailing his journey to London and the second, taking place some decade later, portraying his plight and ongoing search once he gets there.

The first thing that impressed me about One was the opening chapter. Put simply, the first few pages contained some of the most exciting and effective opening action I've ever read. The book begins with protagonist Richard Jane deep under the North Sea working on an oil rig, which is where he finds himself when the apocalyptic event occurs. Mr. Williams does an astoundingly good job of conveying to the reader a sense of how Jane and his fellow divers would have experienced this event and it roped me in immediately.

What follows in the first part of the book is the story of Jane's efforts to make it to London where he hopes to find his young son, Stanley. Mr. Williams punctuates the story with Jane's recollections about his former life with his ex wife and young son. As the story progresses these recollections take on an obsessional quality as his search for Stanley becomes Jane's sole reason for carrying on. I found this to be a welcome dimension to the story but some will find that it slows the book down.

The second part of the book takes place roughly a decade later in a vastly depopulated London that has become extraordinarily dangerous due to rats, desperate human beings, and something altogether different and terrifying, brought on by the cataclysm, that can turn animals and humans into creatures much more deadly. This entire second part paints a picture that is practically unrivalled in the desolation it portrays.

The attention Mr. Williams gives to the relationship between Jane and his son is reminiscent of the relationship that is at the center of McCarthy's The Road, but One is distinguishable from other post-apocalyptic tales in at least two other respects. First of all, One, more than other books in the subgenre, focuses not just on particular relationships but examines more generally what happens to the ability of human beings to create relationships in such a broken world, it shows us what those relationships would look like. The resulting picture reveals that in addition to the destruction of the world people themselves, as a species, have been destroyed, are no longer capable of forming relationships of the same quality.

The second thing that distinguished One from similar tales was what we learn about the nature of the creatures that stalks the weary remnants of humanity in London and elsewhere. This last part of the story introduces sci-fi elements that were almost entirely missing prior to this point. They brought an interesting twist to the story but appearing as they did towards the end weren't adequately explored in my opinion.

I really enjoyed One, depressing as it is. I also thoroughly enjoyed the way Mr. Williams writes. Full of juicy metaphors and similes, it felt at once traditional and uniquely effective. I'll definitely be reading more works by Mr. Williams in the future.

Rating: 8/10

The True First

One was first published by Virgin Books in the UK in April of 2009 as a trade paperback. The same publisher made it available in the States in June of 2009 but I have unfortunately not found it in any bookstores around here.

[This review was not based on a review copy]