Rachelle Atalla’s previous novels, The Pharmacist and Thirsty Animals, introduced readers to a writer who creates dystopian worlds which are utterly believable – depicting realities not so much alternative as uncanny. Her latest, The Salt Flats, continues this theme. Martha and Finn are a married couple whose relationship exists, but only barely, as they face their own past and mortality in very different and divisive ways.
Finn’s reflections are personal, concerned with the illness which has come to define him. Meanwhile, Martha is terrified to the point of exhaustion by what the future holds for the world and what she believes is impending climate disaster. They are at breaking point, together yet never more alone, and it seems as if their last hope rests in a visit to the mysterious Salt Centre in rural Bolivia and the rumoured powers of the salt flats. There they meet a group of fellow travellers who are also looking to heal in their own ways, as well as those who work at The Salt Centre under the command of the charismatic and shamanesque Oscar. What follows is a series of tasks, tests, and hallucinogenic ceremonies which increase in intensity and effect.
In The Salt Flats, Rachelle Atalla has managed to create an atmosphere which is unsettling, creepy, and claustrophobic even when set in the most wide-open spaces. Martha and Finn, and their new companions, start to experience a state of nature which is red in tooth and claw, and increasingly there is a hint of Lord of the Flies, a struggle between the civility left behind and this newfound chaos. But the writer is careful to ensure readers are never led by the hand or given easy answers. Rather, there are implied questions about ourselves and what we may be capable of, as we are asked to empathise with the most uncomfortable and often nauseating human traits.
This is a novel for our times, but also for all time, as the complex and fragile humanity at its heart will endure.
The Salt Flats is published by Hodder & Stoughton
