Published by Grand Central Publishing on January 12, 2021
The Effort begins as a pre-apocalyptic novel that images, perhaps correctly, humanity brewing its own destruction as soon as people fear the threat of destruction by an outside force. The novel is, in the end, the story of the Wayãpi, an indigenous people of French Guiana and Brazil. The ending is more interesting than the beginning. Unfortunately, The Effort takes too many dead-end detours before it finds a story worth telling.
The novel begins with a comet hurtling toward Earth, the premise of more than one “can the Earth be saved?” movie. The usual suspects, including scientists and a multi-lingual interpreter, gather on the equator to consider Earth-saving options, culminating in the usual plan to nuke the comet. Unfortunately, a rocket that can deliver the warhead can’t be developed before the launch deadline until, with an assist from left field, a rocket suddenly appears. That part of the story, involving a Chinese scientist who arguably betrays her country to save the planet, is too muddled to build dramatic tension.
In fact, the entire “save the planet” premise eventually fizzles out as the story follows other plotlines. One involves passengers on the final voyage of a Coast Guard vessel performing scientific research on a polar expedition. The ship is eventually recalled after everyone on Earth is panicking and killing each other in anticipation that the meteor will kill them anyway. Before it reaches port, however, the captain discharges a couple of passengers, allowing the lovers a chance to survive in isolation, for a time at least, if the meteor doesn’t kill them immediately. The ship’s captain ends up doing a survivalist bit in the Cascade Mountains as he searches for his family, but his character development is so belated that the reader has no investment in him when he finally becomes important. The captain encounters a legitimate survivalist but, thankfully, The Effort isn’t an addition to the horrid collection of survivalist novels. In any event, that story fizzles away as Claire Holroyde moves on to another plot thread.
The concept of mass panic should be exciting but Holroyde makes it into an abstraction. The story breaks the “show, don’t tell” rule by keeping food riots and hoarding in the background, usually reported on the news or, in one instance, observed by a kid using a telescope on the balcony of a high-rise that seems to have escaped looters. For the most part, it is easy to forget that the world is falling apart because the story is so unfocused.
Holroyde’s most interesting theme concerns the Wayãpi, rainforest dwellers whose habitat is threatened by global warming and other sources of pervasive environmental destruction. Not only are they well situated to avoid the rioting and loss of technology upon which the rest of the world depends, the meteor might actually save the Wayãpi by destroying all the corporations that were ravaging the rainforest for their own selfish interests. The possibility of karma adds an upbeat note to the story, although I wouldn’t call this an upbeat novel.
There is ample reason to be pessimistic about the world’s future and there’s no reason fiction shouldn’t reflect that pessimism. My complaint about The Effort is that the story is too scattered to carry any weight. The potential meteor strike is a springboard for story lines that go nowhere. The Coast Guard ship and its captain and the couple who strike out on their own all have their moments, but not enough moments to make it possible to care about the characters or their fate. Most of the characters who work to save humanity from the meteor eventually fade from the story and the effort to save the Earth almost becomes an afterthought.
My sense is that Holroyd's ambition exceeded her ability to manage the story. The novel’s drama is dispersed along storylines that make no contribution to a larger point, while the central drama — the hope of saving Earth from the meteor or the panic caused by impending doom — isn’t dramatic at all. In the end, only the story of the Wayãpi gives the novel a purpose, but all the other plotlines get in the way of the one that matters. I liked the Wayãpi story enough to give the novel a cautious recommendation but I didn’t like the novel well enough to recommend it without caution.
RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS