The debut from London-based Missouri Williams, The Doloriad is not the usual post-apocalyptic novel. Set in the aftermath of some unnamed cataclysm, it’s part twisted Greek tragedy, part Gothic horror story, and shaped to serve as a violent feminist fable. It follows a large family who eke out a living in the mossy remnants of a city that was once in Czechia. Led by the indomitable Matriarch, who rules from a tall tower in her electric wheelchair and wraparound sunglasses, the family’s inbred lineage has left human bodies as ruined as the landscape around them, creating an almost literal food chain of brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, sons and daughters. Individuals with deformities both physical and mental, often reduced to animal urges and prone to outbursts of brutality.
Rooted in the futility of existence at the end of civilisation, The Doloriad is brave enough to mostly forgo plot in favour of atmosphere, the vibe shifting from unbearably oppressive to almost dream-like. But there is a story to follow. One centring on Dolores, one of the younger offspring, legless and pale and grublike, who is sent away as a marriage offering to a mysterious group of others who may be real, delusion or lie. When Dolores unexpectedly returns alone, the Matriarch’s grip on the community begins to loosen and what little order existed dissolves.
But it is Williams’s intricate prose which stands apart, and the resulting heavy, listless atmosphere which settles over everything. A tone warm, fetid and claustrophobic, embodied by scenes in the makeshift schoolroom where both pupils and teacher drift off to sleep during the latter’s rambling sermons. Even moments of extreme violence elicit little response from this broken family, as if nature’s unthinking cruelty has begun to sprout in their souls in the same manner plants and fungi have reclaimed what were once buildings parcelled off for human existence.
Odd, shocking, sometimes surreal (wait for the sitcom segments) and often beautiful despite itself, The Doloriad is a much needed poisonous antidote to the identikit khaki and rubble of most post-apocalyptic fiction. You won’t find any simple moral arcs here, no Hail Mary hopes of salvation. For Williams’s vision of the end times paints the remaining people as maggots writhing around in the rotten remains of our world.
The Doloriad is out now via Dead Ink Books (UK), and will be released next month in the US via MCD x FSG Originals.