“You’re not … you,” his father tells Proctor cryptically before being bundled away. But after a disastrous incident that occurs when Proctor escorts his own aging father to the ferry, his dreams become indistinguishable from reality, and his respectable life begins to disintegrate. Unlike most Prosperans, Proctor - 42 years old, comfortably married, proud civil servant - dreams in his sleep. Rather than undergo the indignities of birth and death, old or infirm Prosperans are sent by ferry to a mysterious island called the Nursery, where their memories are wiped and their bodies rejuvenated, so they can return as hale 16-year-olds with new identities. (Prospera is an island, after all.)Įven the book’s genre touches are incorporated with a certain lightness. There’s something mildly intoxicating, in fact, about entering this utopia, called Prospera, because Cronin’s shrewd world-building allows us to have it both ways: We sink into aspirational fantasy even as we relish the author’s sly commentary on a certain species of coastal elite. The narration’s pleasingly sharp details - the “asparagus grilled in a film of oil,” a blazer that bears a yacht club’s insignia - are some of the many appealing things about “The Ferryman,” a 538-page book that clips along as effortlessly as you might scroll through a well-curated Instagram feed. Early in Justin Cronin’s new novel, Proctor Bennett, the titular ferryman, attends a piano recital and finds the experience akin to “watching someone perfectly hammer nails into a board.” This aesthetic judgment arrives with all the force of a consciousness-changing epiphany. The only snag? The art is bad, and no one seems to realize it. People fetch soy lattes after yoga, “flushed with high-minded health.” They live in self-designed houses overlooking the sea, hold season tickets to the opera, have careers as couturiers and art dealers and vintners.
For a science-fictional utopia created by a reclusive “Designer,” the world of “The Ferryman” bears a startling resemblance to the well-heeled strata of, say, San Francisco or New York.
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