Syncopation by Whitney French

Though utopian fiction is far from uniform, we might modify Tolstoy’s famous dictum about unhappy families to say that every work of post-apocalyptic speculative dystopia must be unhappy, too, in its own way, and that the relationship and power dynamics its author sees persisting in the world after collapse must be particular to their own experience, their privileges, deprivations, and insight into what is unsustainable about the now. Syncopation, a novel in verse by the Black futurist Whitney French, demonstrates this particularity throughout—after natural disaster and war divide the planet into four quadrants, earth’s population finds itself similarly divided, into four factions that each relate to memory in their own way, either weaving it into nature or into textiles, storing it on microchips, or preserving it in oral storytelling traditions (all but the micro-chip users seem to benefit from extrasensory perceptions relating to their chosen method, such as being able to trace the personal history of a garment in the case of the Adorners, or textile weavers). Focus on memory, and embodying collapse, is a particularly fruitful response to a moment in which information feels fleeting and focused only on the present rather than historical (or pre- or extra-historical) conditions. French’s dystopia is the background for a love story, poignant in its grand arc, that sees its protagonists Z and O meet by chance while waiting out literal acid rain in a bodega and reuniting after cross country separation eighty-three days later.

            Some of the book’s influences are traced out in its epigraphs and back pages, including Octavia E.  Butler, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison, but I also thought I detected correspondence to the work N.K. Jemisin, William Gibson, Derek Walcott, and—perhaps unavoidable in the genre of queer novels in verse, especially those set in this country (no matter the year)—Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red. The writing at times could be lush and confident, particularly when moving or thinking through the natural world, as in “loam feels good under toes—/ this world of clay and sediment reminds us/ we are birthed in the aroma of rot” or, following a point made in conversation early between the two lovers, “leaves from a meagre maple/ agree overhead.” French, too, makes an interesting connection between embodiments of disaster in Syncopation and a park in Montréal where the memory of the murdered Fredy Alberto Villanueva is embodied in a memorial tree, in the late twenty-first century lost in the arbour, which only multiplies its memory: “I tend to all the trees./ m’pran swen tout zab yo./ some say it’s that one, the oak/ by the gate, or this buckeye/ twisting here, cherie/ ki tòde isi la.” I would have loved to have seen more connections like this in the narrative itself, our recent traumatic past intruding into French’s destroyed future, especially since memory, what is held onto and what is let go, plays such a central role in the book.

            A slow start is overcome towards the middle of the novel, in part due to a greater attention to concrete signifiers and experiences which help to ground the reader and give them a better sense of what French’s world looks like, but I’m not sure the problem is ever fully solved, as the world of Syncopation feels simultaneously under- and overdeveloped. That aforementioned acid rain, for example, which catches Z and O in each other’s orbit, occurs frequently and to devastating consequence, killing anyone caught within, and yet the chance encounter at the bodega occurs 100 km from the nearest bunker. It was hard to imagine a world as devastated as theirs still maintaining such disparate infrastructure, but the outlines of the disaster remained unclear so it is equally difficult to say that with confidence. I understood the world of Syncopation is in many ways destroyed, dissolved by periods of authoritarianism and mass death, but never exactly figured out how—the contours remained fuzzy, despite some flashbacks and expositional work throughout. For instance, the two protagonists had few issues travelling to Vancouver and Montréal from Windsor and then reuniting after two relatively uneventful train trips, despite the trials of their initial meeting (which includes a tunnel collapse between Detroit and Windsor) and the persistence of the deadly acid rain. (The rain itself felt like a narrative problem—it killed and ate through clothes but seemed not to affect infrastructure or the plants it also, supposedly, fed.) For me these issues made it frustrating to follow the logic of the narrative as a whole, as I felt that the stakes were never quite clear, or were constantly updating themselves in ways that didn’t quite resolve with my previous impressions of the book. About midway through Syncopation we learn that O is a pilot who has flown into space, and later that interstellar travel is possible (and used as a means of escape), which does not seem in keeping with the limited scavenging and survival of the earlier sections. We also learn that names and memories function as a kind of currency (Z and O are so-called because they’ve sold the rest of their names). Memories in particular are sliced off as entertainment for others, but how that process functions or who is buying is unclear (the comfort of distraction would seem to be of limited value in a world in which everyone is, presumably, either more concerned with survival or making strong memories due to that effort). Despite French’s obvious ingenuity and imagination, I wanted to either get more details which would help to ground these issues, or for the narrative as a whole to get weirder and to feel more mythic, in which case I don’t think I would have minded the lack of detail. Right now, Syncopation occupies an uncomfortable middle ground.

            This uncertain development extends to the principal characters, whose love seems more like lust, and not quite enough to motivate the narrative. Of course, masterpieces have been written out of paper-thin romantic entanglements, so I think the real issue here is the fact that we know so little about both Z and O, well into the middle of the book, and never really much about their dynamic, except that it changes for the worse once Z learns that her mother has died. Both lovers are attached to each other, but this isn’t Geryon pining for the unavailable Herakles, instead two equally terse characters who seem largely indistinguishable from each other at the onset of the book, except for their immediate backgrounds (one a Neo Griot, concerned with storytelling and able to read distant vibrations, and the other Earth Tech, concerned with and able to read nature). The novel does eventually open up, allowing us more access to their backstories (theirs and some intriguing side characters, such as Sol), and allowing each of them more room to feel and think and speak, but I’m not sure I ever understood why they needed to part in the first place or why their relationship should matter to the reader. I could, however, see the potential in a well-paced conclusion, a final blastoff from O, who chooses to leave Earth, and Z, behind and yet “all O thinks about in the reflection/ of the abyss is Z’s face, one hundred/ light years away.” I wanted that face to haunt and to resonate, for me to feel Z’s absence as O did, but instead I felt the moment fell a little short. That doesn’t mean that I don’t look forward to more focused future excursions from Whitney French.  

André Babyn

André Babyn lives in Montréal. His first novel, Evie of the Deepthorn (Dundurn, 2020), was called a "powerful and promising debut" by Quill and Quire. His collaboration with Jean Marc Ah-Sen,Slodeathland ''66 (Great Plains Press), is due this fall.