Justin Cronin

Orion (UK); Ballantine Books (US)

PROLOGUE

Dawn is breaking when she creeps from the house. The air is cool and fresh; birds are singing in the trees. Everywhere, the sound of the sea, the world鈥檚 great metronome, beating beneath a velvety sky of diminishing stars. In her pale nightdress, she moves through the garden. Her pace is not hesitant, merely unhurried, almost fond. How like a ghost she must look, this solitary figure floating among the flower beds, the burbling fountains, the hedges trimmed with creases sharp enough to draw blood. Behind her, the house is dark as a monolith, though soon its seaward-facing windows will swell with light.

It is not an easy thing, to leave a life, a home. The details dig trenches within one 鈥� scents, sounds, associations, rhythms. The creaking floorboard in the upstairs hall. The smell that greets one in the entryway at the end of a day. The light switch that meets the hand without thought in a darkened room. She could have stepped safely among the furniture wearing a blindfold. Twenty years. She would have twenty more if she could.

It was after dinner that she鈥檇 told Malcolm the news. A fine meal, one he loved: broiled lamb chops, risotto with cheese, asparagus grilled in a film of oil; good wine. Coffee and small cr猫me pastries for dessert. They had decided to eat outside; it was such a beautiful night. A riot of flowers on the table, the tick-tock of the sea, candlelight glazing their faces. You will not know when it happens, she told him. I will simply be gone. Powerless, she watched him as he absorbed the blow, his face in his hands. So soon? Does it have to be now? Come to bed with me, she commanded 鈥� her body would say to him the things that words could not 鈥� and after, she held him as he wept. The dark hours passed. At last the lassitude of grief engulfed him. Wrapped in her arms, he slept.

Farewell, gardens, she thinks, farewell, house. Farewell, birds and trees and long, unhurried days, and while I鈥檓 at it, farewell to all the lies I鈥檝e had to tell.

She is growing older. All the things a woman can do, she has done. The creams and extracts. The hours of exercise and meticulously observed diet. The small, discreet surgeries that even Malcolm does not know about. She has applied every resource to the slowing of the years, but that is at its end. She had decided to wait until someone remarked on it, and then, out of the blue, it happened.

鈥淎re you taking care of yourself, Cynthia?鈥�

They had just played tennis, the usual Tuesday group, a dozen women, all good; afterward, glasses of iced tea and salads everybody just picked at, no matter how hungry they were. She hadn鈥檛 played well. She had played, in fact, quite badly. Her knees were sore and slow; the sun felt too strong, sapping her strength. It was time she felt in her limbs, its inexorable march, while all around her, in the bodies and faces of her friends, it moved at a genteel crawl.

But, the question. Her friend was waiting for an answer. Her name was Lauralai Swan. She was close to sixty but looked thirty: skin taut; limbs lean with yoga-sculpted muscle; glorious, bountiful hair. Even her hands looked good. Was the question an expression of genuine concern or something darker? Cynthia had known this day would come, and yet she鈥檇 been caught by surprise, no answer at the ready. Her mind was sorting rapidly; just in time, it came to her. What she needed was a joke.

鈥� Believe me, she said, if you were married to Malcolm, you鈥檇 look tired, too. The man won鈥檛 take no for an answer.

She laughed, hoping Lauralai would laugh, too, and after a fraught moment, she did; everyone did; and soon they were all talking about their husbands, each woman raising the bet with every story that passed around the table, even comparing their men to former lovers and ex-husbands. Who was better, more considerate in bed. Who left his soggy jogging shorts on the bathroom floor. Who squeezed the toothpaste from the middle of the tube.

It was, in sum, a pleasant afternoon in the sunshine, all of them talking the way women liked to do. But inside herself, Cynthia felt something drop. Are you taking care of yourself? The thing that dropped: it was a blade.

Farewell to all of this and all of you, who gave me what passed for a life.

And yet: it is not the parties and concerts she will miss; not the good leather of her luggage and shoes; not the long dinners with beautiful food and good wine and sparkling talk until all hours 鈥� none of these. What she will miss is the boy. She thinks of two days, one a beginning, one an end. The first was the day he had come to her. She had expected to feel nothing; adopting a ward was simply one more thing a person in her position would do. The boy was, in that sense, a form of d茅cor, like the couch in her living room or the art upon her walls. Oh, you鈥檝e taken a ward! people would say. You must be so thrilled! They had seen a picture of him, of course. One did not choose blindly. Yet the moment Cynthia caught sight of him, standing at the rail of the ferry, something changed. He was taller than she had anticipated, at least six feet, his height amplified by his neutral, poorly fitting clothing, rather like pajamas or a doctor鈥檚 scrubs. Though the wards were staring over the rail with a kind of unfocused blankness, he alone was looking about, taking in the sight of the crowd and the buildings of the city and even the sky, tipping his head upward to feel the sun on his face. His haircut, she saw, was awful. It looked like a blind man had done it. That was something she鈥檇 have to see to right away, getting the boy a proper haircut.

鈥淒o you think that鈥檚 him?鈥� her husband said to her, and when she failed to answer, he addressed the adoption agent who had accompanied them to the ferry: 鈥淚s that our son?鈥�

漏 Reprinted by permission of Orion Books. All rights reserved.

by Justin Cronin is published by Orion. It is the first pick for 快猫短视频鈥檚 new book club, for which you can sign up here

Justin Cronin

Orion (UK); Ballantine Books (US)

The Ferryman was born on a starry autumn night.

I was taking a walk before bed when, all of a sudden, two things dropped into my head. The first was a word: 鈥淥ranios鈥�. The second was a scene: an old man on a pier experiencing some kind of breakdown, and a second man, somebody official, trying to talk him back from the ledge. I had no idea what these two things had to do with one another, and the word Oranios wasn鈥檛 even one I knew. (It鈥檚 a variation on the Greek God Uranus, father of the Titans and lord of the heavens.) But they had to come from some place, and I wanted to know where that was.

It took me a long time to turn this little flash into a novel; I was guided only by the feeling that something was asking to be written. But, bit by bit, a story emerged 鈥� the story of a distant future in which people don鈥檛 die, but are instead ferried to an island where their bodies are refreshed, their memories wiped away and they can begin life anew. It鈥檚 also a story with a huge twist, one that pays homage to a favourite sci-fi conceit of my boyhood 鈥� thus, something I can鈥檛 tell you about without spoiling the book. But every novel has a range of prior stories 鈥� other novels of course, but also movies, television shows and plays 鈥� standing over its shoulder and whispering in its ear.

Here are five of The Ferryman鈥檚:

. There was a time when it was possible to watch Planet of the Apes without knowing the ending in advance, and when I saw it in the early 1970s on my parents鈥� little black-and-white TV, the film鈥檚 famous final moment blew the top of my head off. We鈥檇 been on planet Earth the whole time! Of course! It astonished me how a single image 鈥� Charlton Heston pounding the sand at the foot of a ruined Statue of Liberty 鈥� could so perfectly renovate an entire story in hindsight. I felt like I鈥檇 watched the movie twice just by watching it once, and I wrote an entire novel to try to pull off this trick. I even included a small nod to (also excellent, with a head-smacking surprise ending) in The Ferryman鈥檚 final chapters.

. I was nearly halfway through writing The Ferryman when I realised that William Shakespeare鈥檚 play was the novel鈥檚 primary source material. A remote island. A storm-making magician. His teenage daughter, a teasing sprite and a savage monster. I鈥檇 even called the place Prospera, one small vowel away from Prospero, and named my main character Proctor, a slight linguistic variation. But here鈥檚 the thing: I hadn鈥檛 read The Tempest in 40 years, and I had never seen a stage production of the play. All I鈥檇 done was read it in the spring of 1982 in a college class. But obviously, it had taken residence in my brain for later use. When, late in The Ferryman, I quoted from Shakespeare鈥檚 play, I didn鈥檛 even need to look up the words; they were all still in my head.

. Kazuo Ishiguro鈥檚 dystopian masterpiece astounds me every time I read it. No author applies such gorgeous language to the writing of speculative fiction. He鈥檚 an artist with no boundaries, no inner critic telling him what a Booker prize-winning Nobel laureate should or shouldn鈥檛 write 鈥� and in Never Let Me Go, he takes on the biggest question of all: what makes someone human?

聽Again, right up my alley with its island of strange goings-on. But this history-making show also has magnificent storytelling. The show鈥檚 writers were always happy to toss in new, outlandish elements without apology, which was tonnes of fun, but the focus remained on the characters and their relationships, and the universal themes of loyalty and friendship. Did the writers ever explain the polar bear? Not really. Did I care? Not one bit.

. Both the movie and Arthur C. Clarke鈥檚 novelisation capture something that I often feel has been mislaid in the post-Star Wars era: a sense of pure awe in the face of an infinite and unknowable cosmos. The film is slow moving by current standards, but that is the point 鈥� it is less a story to be watched or read than one to be contemplated. You stand in the presence of 2001 in the same spirit that the ape creatures of its prologue stand before the monolith: knowing you are a witness to something grand that your mind will never be able to grasp completely because the universe is so much bigger than you are.

by Justin Cronin is published by Orion. It is the first pick for 快猫短视频鈥檚 new book club, for which you can sign up here