the descent

The Descent by Gina Berriault (Atheneum, 1960)

A brief, brilliant, and mordant novel, Berriault’s first.  Published in 1960, but set a few years ahead in 1964, The Descent is a dystopian novel about the arms race and the deluded craze for underground bomb shelters.  Berriault’s novel find the United States diverting attention away from the horrors of nuclear war by deluding its citizens with the pleasures and benefits of living underground.  As a sop to pacifists, the President appoints Arnold Elkins, a mild-mannered  professor at a midwestern University, to the newly created cabinet post of Secretary of Humanity.  After a disastrous trip to Hiroshima and an exasperating stop at the United Nations, Elkins, his wife, and his two daughters embark upon an under-financed tour of the country on buses and trains, lodging in cheap hotels, mostly being ignored or abused wherever they appear.

Berriault takes on not only the U.S. government and big business, but also the United Nations, and her vision is dark and angry, but the book itself is often quite amusing as it details the misadventures of the hapless and ill-used Elkins family.  Her writing at this early stage of her career is assured and tense; she’s very much in control of her material, and the book often calls to mind Kafka’s nighmarish normalcy.  An interesting and curious book.