Wayward by Blake Crouch- Is exactly that, wayward

“Over the years of her residency, it had steadily dawned on her that Pines felt much closer to a prison than any afterlife, although perhaps there was no meaningful distinction. A mysterious and beautiful lifelong sentence. It wasn’t just a physical confinement, but a mental one as well, and it was the mental aspect that made it feel like a stint in solitary. The inability to outwardly acknowledge one’s past or thoughts or fears. The inability to truly connect with a single human being.”

That hints a lot about what the book ‘Wayward by Blake Crouch’ is about. A very subtly-suffocating form of surveillance. Where people walk around pretending a normal world- mysteriously ignorant about surgically-inserted chips in their legs, cameras all around (even in homes and private areas), and sensors that pick up the slightest conversations. Some may argue that the reality of our current world is already heading there- with both privacy and freedom of expression in some sort of gilded confinement. That’s palpable in the way Big Tech and social media have dug their grip deep into our everyday lives. So no doubt about that. Author Blake Crouch has a great concept to start with. Like an adrenaline-fuelled Formula 1 car warming up its boots on a tarmac that Crouch builds up in every chapter.

Like this one. Immersing the reader in the hard-to-explain claustrophobia when everything is about keeping up pretenses, where every piece of this world seems artificial. Even the snow, the neighbourhood chats, and the night.

“Ethan finished the dishes, headed upstairs. Ben’s room was at the far end of the hall and the door was closed- just a razor line of light visible underneath. Ethan knocked. ‘Come in.’ Ben was sitting up in bed sketching – charcoal on butcher paper. Ethan eased down on the comforter, asked, ‘Can I take a look?’. Ben lifted his arms. The sketch was the boy’s current vantage point from the bed- the wall, the desk, the window frame, the points of light outside, which were visible through the glass. ‘That’s amazing,’ Ethan said.  ‘It’s not exactly like I want it. The night through the window doesn’t really look like night.

Quite a great and crisp way of sketching what a well-curated future world might feel like- comforting, cozy but not what it ‘should’ look like.

The story, the car, however, only keeps warming up. The protagonist Ethan takes too long to construct the fast lane that is promised somewhere coming- in the way the narrative gathers weight. It all looks like a perfect set-up for a high-speed race. One keeps waiting that any moment the thrilling acceleration would happen. The engine can rev up any minute now. The action- ready to spill in any page next.

And one keeps waiting. The pace and treatment of the story in this book are not faulty or sloppy. It is just meant for a different world. Something in the lane of an Ayn Rand or a Victorian Classical writer.  This story is, on the contrary, supposed to be of the stuff where the protagonist comes alive in full glory and fury to make things right. Where the so-called enemies/beasts – the abbies (aberrations) are described well only to be fought or befriended in an interesting twist of events. The reader expects – thrill, fight, chase, vengeance, speed and edge. Worse- all those elements always seem to stir beneath the surface but they never truly arrive.

It's a nice satire-cum-thriller on the dangers and traps of too much convenience and too much surveillance. It falters only because the characters are seated in a fast-chase car driving on a very slow road. Wayward Pines could have been the perfect simulation of current world realities. If only it could race ahead. Instead, it only sputters and stammers. And worst of worst endings- just when you feel that things are waking up- it ends on an abrupt cliff-hanger- forcing a room for the reader invest more time and effort in the sequel. I will not. This is a Trilogy so chances are the story gets it flesh in the previous and subsequent editions. But I would rather try something else from the author’s forest – the much-recommended book ‘Recursion’. If only to erase this one from my – cough-cough- memory.