M31
M31 is the oddest book I’ve read in a while, and for that, I am grateful. At the outset, a family living in a transformed clapboard church in disrepair watches on eagerly as they view lights approaching from afar. Given the title of the book, we guess that this is perhaps a sighting of a UFO. However, it turns out to be a couple of like-minded people who have had the UFO experience of being ‘taken aboard a ship and probed.’
The couple living at the church (with its cross on the steeple replaced by a spinning radar dish that listens or sends its signals into the ether) are Dash and Dot, their five children, and one grandchild. The state of their lifestyle is one of chaotic squalor, poor hygiene, and processed foods. The visitors turn out to be Beale and Gwen, who will crash at the church, drink beer, and take up residence at the church and near The Object, which is some kind of mini craft or structure the family takes on the road to give talks about their origins, UFOs, and preparing for their journey home.
If this all sounds cultic, I think that’s part of the point. Other conspiracy theories weave in and out of conversations: disappearances, the Bermuda Triangle (mentioned indirectly as the Sargasso Sea), other UFO sightings, government coverups, etc. Charles Fort, progenitor of UFO-ology and many other weird phenomena like ball lightning, cryptids, and the like, is name-dropped at one point. Fort wrote The Book of the Damned in 1919, in which he set forth his distrust of science and unproven speculations. Much contemporary conspiracy theory and government paranoia can be traced to it.
At one point, about two-thirds of the way through, the entire entourage is piled into a VW Minibus and is driving away from a black plume of smoke that was their home. No word is said regarding the origin of the fire. There is no causal connection to infer. The reader is forced to concoct his or her own reason that is unsupported by any factual basis. (Also, think of the family in DeLillo’s White Noise that is fleeing the poisonous plume in a station wagon, where the journey is also into an unreal landscape.) As they flee, they remain in shabby motels and by the end, most of the characters have vanished from the narrative, other than Dash and Zoe, as Dash is convinced she is able to maintain communications with the beings somewhere in the M31 galaxy.
The book finishes with Dash’s end. We are not told specifically what happens as it is told from his point of view. The final chapter indicates Gwen has safely escaped the cult and is on her own.
The novel reminds me of DeLillo and Pynchon, as the language is that good. The overall effect during the read is one of disconnection, unreality, and weird echoes that resonate through the present moment. Wright’s vivid descriptions of scenery, the realistic dialogue of a thoroughly dysfunctional family, and an increasingly malevolent father set the overall tone. The ending is left for the reader to fill in some blanks, which lends itself to any novel incorporating paranoia and aliens.