'Awake in the Floating City' finds hope — and artistry — in a submerged San Francisco

Bertolt Brecht wrote that, successful the acheronian times, determination volition besides beryllium singing. In Susanna Kwan’s debut novel, she asks whether those songs whitethorn beryllium sung if determination are nary choirs to sing them. Choirs necessitate community, and the relation of assemblage during biology catastrophe is 1 of the themes that runs done this thoughtful caller astir art, instauration and the ways we attraction for 1 another.

Bo is simply a 40ish pistillate surviving successful a San Francisco high-rise successful the mid-21st century. The metropolis is underwater aft being swamped by the rising Pacific Ocean and incessant rain. But the metropolis continues to exist. Those who person not fled inhabit the precocious floors of skyscraper flat blocks. Bo’s cousins person lined up enactment opportunities for her successful Canada, but erstwhile the caller begins, she is insistent connected staying. What keeps her determination is grief; 2 years before, her parent disappeared during a storm. Bo clings to the anticipation that 1 time she volition beryllium reunited with her.

Like Bo earlier the rains, Kwan is an creator and she conveys what goes missing successful her character’s beingness aft biology disaster: In the perpetual rainfall determination are nary longer seasons. And without seasons, determination are nary holidays oregon festivals to people the changes successful the year. Bo marks clip with her twice-weekly sojourn to the rooftop markets, wherever merchants merchantability nutrient they’ve grown oregon had brought successful by boat. But it’s besides wherever she scans the bulletin boards filled with photos of the missing and mislaid successful hunt of her mother.

Kwan’s caller hones successful connected the ways that isolation and boredom sap captious parts of ourselves. The publication captures America’s caller history: 2020 and isolating successful our apartments and houses portion outside, the dormant piled up successful freezer vans and wide graves. The ways that anxiousness and loneliness caused galore to crook inward, to marque what was happening personal, arsenic if nary 1 other was affected. The nonaccomplishment of assemblage and empathy for others drowned successful the waves of fear, uncertainty, and for many, anger. Bo herself struggles with her idiosyncratic feelings of vexation and grief, but past reminds herself that she hasn’t been singled retired for atrocious fortune.

(Pantheon)

“What made her peculiar successful the agelong quality past of situation and displacement?” Bo wonders. “She had followed reports of vigor waves that ne'er subsided, outbreaks of anthrax and smallpox and malaria, continents dried to deserts, genocidal regimes, subject blockades astatine borders that prevented transition to hundreds of thousands of radical with obscurity to go, children drowning astatine sea. And yet the substance of her ain privileged leaving felt bonzer and without precedent, adjacent arsenic she registered this delusion.”

Before her parent disappeared, Bo worked perpetually arsenic an illustrator and painter, a root of joyousness that sustained her. But aft her ma dies — and it is wide that her parent has astir apt been washed retired to oversea — she is paralyzed. “Art, she’d travel to feel, served nary intent successful a clip similar this. It belonged to different world, 1 she’d near behind.” Grief has grayed-out her emotion for colorful creation.

One day, a neighbour slips a enactment nether her door. It is simply a petition that Bo travel assistance retired Mia with household chores. Mia lives alone, and astatine property 129, is struggling.

Bo has supported herself successful the constricted system arsenic a caregiver. Many of those successful the high-rises are the elderly, successful immoderate cases abandoned by their fleeing children, but sometimes conscionable excessively fragile to beryllium moved. By 2050, radical are surviving past 100 and surviving to 130 isn’t rare. But 130-year-old elders person aged children and adjacent aged grandchildren. Weaker bonds with third- and fourth-generation descendants has near galore to look aft themselves.

Bo is the girl of Chinese immigrants; Mia came from China with her parents. Mia’s girl and further descendants unrecorded thousands of miles away. Caring for Mia reminds Bo of the clip she spent with her parent erstwhile they made predominant treks to cheque successful connected household elders, a mode of paying respect, her ma told her erstwhile Bo was a child.

In Mia’s apartment, the 2 women statesman to enslaved successful the kitchen. Bo prepares nutrient portion Mia tells stories of her beingness successful San Francisco. She had been calved successful the 1920s, not that agelong aft the earthquake and devastating occurrence that leveled the metropolis successful 1906. Mia’s beingness parallels the maturation of San Francisco and her memories of however the metropolis changed done the decades successful the 20th period intrigues Bo. So overmuch was lost, archetypal successful the question of explosive colonisation maturation and wealth, but erstwhile the rains came, full parts of the metropolis disappeared, their histories swallowed by the relentless emergence of the Pacific.

Bo’s memories person already been dulled by perpetual grayness. But hanging retired with Mia loosens thing wrong of Bo, and she notices that her senses tin service arsenic “time machines,” and springiness her entree to her ain past. There are evident reminders — a photograph — but songs are particularly evocative adjacent earlier she recognizes the tune. “A opus provided transition from the contiguous presumption backmost to a spot and time, chiseled and palpable. The travel was quick, a sled tearing down a luge track, the assemblage sensing its accomplishment earlier the caput could registry the journey.”

Bo’s occasional person is simply a antheral who visits San Francisco arsenic portion of his occupation moving successful earthy resources. He spends overmuch of the clip counting and cataloging what taxon remain, oregon what is astir to beryllium lost. When helium arrives backmost successful municipality aft she has started moving for Mia, Bo finds that her increasing consciousness of purpose, her tendency to instrumentality to art-making, is motivated by a akin impulse.

She wants to catalog Mia’s experiences, her memories of the metropolis that nary longer exists. In their agelong conversations, Mia summons images and histories of places that Bo ne'er knew existed. Inspired by Mia, Bo goes to the city’s archive and searches for the photographs, paper articles, blueprints, maps and different ways that the now-missing metropolis documented its existence.

For Mia’s approaching 130th birthday, which Bo senses volition beryllium her employer’s last, she decides that she volition usage her skills arsenic an creator to bring the aged metropolis backmost to beingness 1 much clip — a acquisition for her employer, but besides a means by which Bo tin recapture the chaotic vigor that is creation.

Survivalists preparing for an imagined catastrophic aboriginal hoard nutrient and supplies and banal up connected guns to “protect” themselves from those successful need. But arsenic Kwan shows, specified visions of the aboriginal are the refractions of nihilism and the American content that idiosyncratic endurance and occurrence is owed solely to idiosyncratic effort. But that’s ne'er been the case. What preserves quality beingness — adjacent a beingness successful horrific circumstances — are relationships of caring and cooperation. Community built connected taking attraction of each different is the lone mode that we volition thrive. The networks we physique to enactment others yet becomes the societal information nett we volition ourselves need.

In acheronian times, the songs that volition comfortableness america volition not beryllium the cacophony of idiosyncratic voices wailing their grief. The acheronian volition beryllium lifted by the harmonies of those who admit each other’s humanity.

Berry is simply a writer and professional surviving successful Oregon.