The Ferryman (novel)

Cynthia and Malcolm Bennett live in the utopian archipelago of Prospera. The Bennetts adopt a 16-year-old boy named Proctor. Decades later, an aging Cynthia rows a boat away from her home and drowns herself.

As an adult, Proctor serves as the archipelago’s ferryman. He helps transport elderly citizens to the Nursery, where they have their memories wiped and are reborn as teenagers. Proctor is called to transport his father to the ferry. As they arrive at the docks, Malcolm becomes agitated and tries to flee. Malcolm whispers the word “Oranios” to Proctor before departing. As a result of this incident, Proctor is fired from his position as ferryman.

Thea Dimopolous, a Prosperan, is a member of an underground religious movement called the Arrivalists. The Arrivalists include both Prosperans and their service workers, who live on the Annex. Class conflict has recently grown between the impoverished workers and the wealthy Prosperans. Thea and Proctor sleep together while his wife Elise is away.

Proctor gives swimming lessons to a teenager named Caeli. Caeli calls Proctor and tells him that they won’t see each other for a while. Proctor deduces that Caeli is going to be forcibly sent to the Nursery to have her memory wiped. Thea and Proctor attempt to rescue Caeli. Proctor is captured and is forced to board the ferry. He escapes and is taken to the leader of the Arrivalists: his mother Cynthia, who had faked her own suicide. Proctor and his companions decide to sail away from Prospera, unsure if anything exists beyond their archipelago. As they pass the Nursery, they crash into a gravity-defying waterfall.

Proctor and Thea awaken to find themselves on the spaceship Oranios, having arrived at the planet Caelus. Proctor regains memories of life on Earth with Elise; they had a daughter named Caeli. At age four, Caeli drowned in the family’s pool. Proctor was the Director of the Prospera Corporation, which was seeking a second home for humanity after a climate crisis destroyed Earth. Many of the world’s billionaires paid to board this flight, along with tens of thousands of scientists. The entire experience of the Prosperans (billionaires) and their service workers (the scientists) has been a collective dream; it was necessary to keep the passengers dreaming to prevent them from going insane during cryostasis. Elise serves as the Designer, the linchpin holding the collective dream together. Elise, shattered by Caeli’s death, created a simulation without children and attempted to erase Caeli’s memory entirely.

On Oranios, Proctor and his companions learn that a group of conspirators including billionaire Otto Winspear decided to keep the simulation when the ship arrived at Caelus. These billionaires found Prospera preferable to reality. Proctor blames the billionaires for Earth’s destruction. He admits that he created the economic division between Prosperans and Annex workers so that the colonists would have a motive to eventually leave the simulation.

In Prospera, Otto is a high-ranking security agent. He stages a coup and assumes control of the archipelago’s government. Elise’s subconscious mind begins to remember Caeli, causing severe storms and threatening to shut down the simulation. Proctor and Thea return to the simulation to attempt to wake Elise. Meanwhile, Otto plans to send Elise to the Nursery. Instead of allowing her to be reborn, he will erase her and take her place as the new Designer. Just as the Arrivalist workers from the Annex begin a revolt against their Prosperan overlords, Proctor finds Elise. They remember Caeli together and the simulation ends.

The passengers on Oranios awaken and begin to colonize Caelus. The colonists include Thea, pregnant with Proctor’s child. Proctor, Elise, and the billionaires remain behind on Oranios. He serves as the Designer of a new simulation; he wipes his own memories of the real world and begins a new virtual life. The novel ends as Proctor and Elise celebrate Caeli’s eighth birthday in their new simulation, unaware that it is not real.

According to David Walton of the New York Journal of Books, The Ferryman is ultimately "about love and loss", being "crammed with parent-child relationships of many types: natural and adopted, through genetic or simply emotional ties, the parental relationship of a much older brother or a mentor or a friend or even a leader of a faction of rebels." Walton notes that even the descriptions of class conflict in the novel are reflected in parent-child relationships; the upper-class Prosperans adopt teenagers, but the lower-class Annex workers are able to give birth naturally. The review states that every parent-child relationship in the novel is eventually lost, and that "the emotional weight of enduring the loss of a parent or child weaves through every chapter of this novel".^[1]

According to Chelsea Leu of the New York Times, Cronin references The Tempest repeatedly, including motifs of "freak storms," the concept of enchanted islands, and the archipelago's namesake, Prospero. Prospero's speeches are directly quoted several times in the latter half of The Ferryman. Just as Shakespeare's Prospero was the puppet-master of his own enchanted island, Cronin uses the idea of "the Designed" to explore a "meta-commentary on the creative act itself".^[2]