Not Forgetting the Whale - John Ironmonger

Not the End of the World

John Ironmonger takes an unusually quirky and optimistic outlook on the traditional apocalypse genre in Not Forgetting the Whale. It's an approach that is radically different from any number of recent novels (The Road, California, The Dog Stars, The Passage) that anticipate the possibility/likelihood of a complete breakdown of society and a return to barbarism after an epidemic/disaster in the near future. Were it not for J.G. Ballard's bleak exploration of various disaster scenarios, I'd say that Ironmonger takes a more British attitude of calmly just getting on with things. Here, it might be the apocalypse, but that doesn't mean it's the end of the world...

...though it might well be. It's an economic crisis that brings investment banker Joe Haak out of the City and washed up naked on a beach in Cornwall on the back of a whale, but Joe has seen the signs, or at least a computer programme he has developed has predicted an even bigger collapse that will have a much wider and deeper impact on the world economy and society as a whole. Not Forgetting the Whale however is not exactly your typical disaster novel and John Ironmonger's view of it doesn't extend much beyond the impact on a small Cornish village. How they react to Joe, to the news he brings, and to the romantic complications he brings to St Piran, is not what you might expect.

And that's what's great about John Ironmonger's writing. It might seem like he writes whimsical stories filled with quirky characters, but he also manages to confront basic questions about life, society and human nature at the same time. Not Forgetting the Whale gathers the probabilities of mathematical modelling and social observation then and contrasts that with the rising of the sun, the flow of the tides, (not forgetting) the behaviour of a whale, as well as the unpredictable and unknowable nature of human beings when faced with a crisis. He compares and contrasts networks with communities and comes to some surprising conclusions.

Unlike other writers, Ironmonger comes down on the side of humanity, having faith in their basic nature, delighting in the wonderful puzzles, mysteries, variables and delights that can be found in the unremarked and the unremarkable. Not Forgetting the Whale consequently has an indefinable quality that lies somewhere between the mythical and the mundane, with warm engaging characters. It's not quirky, it's just wonderfully human, which makes it charming, entertaining and surprisingly life-affirming.

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