The Hundred Year Flood - Matthew Salesses

Little A Publishing, 2015.

 

Four Stars

 

What struck me first about this novel was the poetic language, filled with metaphors and similes that are unusual yet strong and compelling. The writing is ethereal, and the story is only slowly revealed through foreshadowing, which causes a sense of dislocation for the reader. We aren’t sure where Tee is going, and neither is he. After struggling to deal with tragedy – both the events of 9/11 and the more personal suicide of his uncle – he leaves for Prague, hiding from himself as well as his family issues.

 

Tee is lost: he doesn’t understand himself or his own motivations, which makes it even more puzzling for the reader. He needs others to contextualize himself and without context – modelling for the artist Pavel Picasso, interacting with co-workers at a labyrinthine bookshop – he feels he will disappear. Confusion about his roots adds to his identity issues: Tee is Korean, adopted by an American family, living in the Czech Republic. Once his co-dependent relationships with the artist and his wife are thrown into the mix, Tee is in the midst of a full-blown identity crisis.

 

For the first half of this novel, I was having a really hard time following the storyline and staying invested in the characters. I thought it might have to do with the disjointed way I read it (a moment here or there) but I now think it is due to the many themes that the novel tries to reconcile. Tee’s struggle for a new identity takes many forms, as does his attempt to come to terms with his place in the family structure. The author explores themes of predestination and karma, as Tee looks down on his father for having an affair, yet begins one of his own with a married woman. Tee wants to prove he is different, yet he is ultimately just as selfish as his father – and it seems implied that selfishness is the human condition.

 

On top of everything else, all of Tee’s angst is taking place in the shadow of a flood that apparently occurs every one hundred years, although we are not really told why. It could be an overarching metaphor for the pointlessness of Tee’s (and everyone’s) existential crisis – it doesn’t matter who we are, it all gets washed away in the end. The flood also takes on a biblical quality: the water rises in Tee’s hideout with his married lover, literally washing away their sins.

 

The Hundred Year Flood was disjointed with moments of clarity – although I think that was intentional – with lovely metaphors that redeemed any issues I had with the plot. Tee is completely flawed, which is what makes him so satisfying to read about and so very relatable.

 

I received this book from Little A Publishing and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.