Armageddon House
by Michael Griffin
A review
If I hadn’t pre-ordered Armageddon House
in early March, before the Covid pandemic escalated, I would have easily believed
that this novella was inspired by the lockdown. It starts in medias res, presenting us
with two couples of sorts – Mark and Jenna, Greyson and Polly – living in a hi-tech
underground bunker. Their subterranean
world has all the necessities they require.
There’s a well-equipped kitchen, a gym and swimming pool, a tavern and
even a sort of museum. There’s food to
last many a lifetime and unspecified “medication” which they need to take on a daily
basis. Away from the outside world, these
characters try to hold on to their sanity by sticking to well-established routines.
Are these four characters the last survivors of
some apocalyptic disaster? Are they human guinea pigs in a strange
experiment? They don’t know and we don’t
know either. Mark – from whose
perspective we seem to see things – suffers from strange memory gaps, perhaps
induced by the medication. There are glimpses
of hazy memories, hints suggesting a very different past. The quartet explore the levels of the bunker,
trying to understand their situation and to possibly find a means of escape. We
look on, as lost and perplexed as they are.
At first, this book reads like a literary equivalent
of the “Big Brother” reality show. In close,
enforced confinement, tempers fray, tensions simmer, occasionally overstepping
into violence. Friendships are made and unmade, desire waxes and wanes. As the novella progresses, however, we
realise that the claustrophobic horror portrayed does not exist merely an individual
level, but also on a cosmic one. Tellingly, Griffin slips in references to
Norse sagas. Whilst these mythical undertones initially seem out of place in a
sci-fi scenario, they suggest that Armageddon House should be read as an
existential fable, possibly representing our constant struggle to understand the
human predicament – Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Whether the book works for you or not depends, of
course, on what scale of “weird” you like your “fiction” to be. In some ways, Griffin’s novella reminded me
of I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. I feel that, like Harpman’s book, Armageddon
House is a “novel(la) as thought experiment”. Narratively, it leaves too many questions
unanswered. I find this frustrating but other
readers, of course, might not – some might even delight in the ambiguities. Beyond the bare bones of the plot, however, the
novella raises haunting, philosophical questions which cannot be easily
dismissed and this is where its strength lies.
Kindle Edition, 73 pages
Published May 12th 2020 by Undertow Publications
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