Margaret Atwood - The Tent

In this novel all the worms die. That would include the nematodes. Also anything wormlike in shape, though it may not be a worm proper. Should grubs be included? Should maggots? I’ll know better once I get thoroughly into this thing.

Worms, anyway. Those in the earth, and those in the water. Those inside fish. Those inside dogs. Those inside people, such as pinworms, roundworms, and tapeworms. They die, each and every one. It’s not all downside.

Or it’s not all downside at first. But quite soon—because the earthworms are now defunct, and that’s important—the soil is no longer circulating in the usual fashion. Worm dung is no longer extruded at the surface, wormholes no longer allow rain to penetrate. Valuable nutrients remain sealed in layers of subsoil. Formerly productive fields turn to granite. Crops become stunted and then won’t grow at all. Famine gets going.

Who shall we follow in the course of this doleful story? I vote for Chris and Amanda. They are a nice young couple who’ve had great sex in Chapter One, or possibly Chapter Two. Then realization has dawned on them, ruining their plans to renovate their kitchen and install a new round eco-friendly refrigerator that pops up out of the kitchen counter.

They flee to their summer cottage, as civic order breaks down in the once-thriving town where they live and people start eating their cats and goldfish and the dried ornamental sunflowers in their dining-room floral arrangements.

Amanda, who is the optimist of the pair, tries to grow some Tiny Tim tomatoes in the pathetic little patch of ground they once used only for petunias. Chris is a realist. He looks disaster squarely in its wormless face. (Yes—it’s come to me!—the maggots have perished as well, which explains the various animal carcasses littering the cottage premises, gnawed on by crows and such, but not cleaned up neatly the way the maggots would once have done it.)

Last scene: Amanda is trying to poke holes in the flint-hard soil with a knitting needle. Chris comes out of the house. He has a cup containing their last scrapings of decaf instant coffee. “At least we’re together,” says Amanda.

Or should I have Chris yell, “Where are you, fucking worms, when we need you most?”

Maybe Amanda should yell it. That would be unexpected, and might show that her character has developed.

Now that this has happened—this cathartic, revealing, and somehow inspiriting yell—a small, still-wriggling worm might be discovered in the corner of the garden, copulating with itself. It would sound a note of plangent hope. I always like to end on those.

In this novel, a sponge located on a reef near the coast of Florida begins to grow at a very rapid rate. Soon it has reached the shore and is oozing inland, swallowing beach condos and gated communities as it goes. Nothing is able to stop it. It shows no respect for roadblocks, state police, or even bombs. A sponge on the rampage is a formidable foe. It has no central nervous system, not like us.

“It’s not like us,” says Chris, from the top of his condo, where he has gone with his binoculars to reconnoitre. Amanda clings to him fearfully. What a shame this is—they just bought the condo, in which they had great sex in Chapter One, and now look. All that decor gone to waste.