Book Review: Adrift by Lisa Brideau

When our protagonist wakes up one day, she has no idea who she is or how she came to be alone on a sailboat called the Sea Dragon. All she has by way of explanation is a note telling her to start over and to not look back.

Her Canadian ID identifies her as Sarah Jane Song, but she knows instinctively that it’s a fake name, even if nothing, not even her face, feels familiar to her. She realizes that she must have amnesia, even before the note lets her know that the condition was purposely induced in order for her to better escape a shadowy “them.” At least she knows her way around a sailboat, as she slowly pieces together her location, just south of Alaska in the Pacific Northwest.

Unfortunately, whoever arranged for her to be on the Sea Dragon missed a few key issues with the ship. Most pressing is a lack of drinkable water, due most likely to a leaky water tank. With the help of the Sea Dragon’s library of sailing charts, she makes her way to land and slowly begins to feel out what exactly is going on, both with her and with the world, and how she can hopefully find answers and fix things.

Canada in the year 2038 is a magnet for climate refugees, and has tightened its borders in response. While her paperwork is all in order, our heroine—who’s chosen to go by the name Ess—can’t help fearing that she’ll somehow give away the fact that she has no idea who she is due to amnesia-induced social awkwardness. It doesn’t help that other amnesiacs have been found drifting in boats off of Canada’s western coast. Their condition is treated as a dodgy scheme for asylum, as Hito, a newly made acquaintance in the Harbour Authority, lets her know. As curious about the other amnesiacs as she craves human company, she decides to pursue her relationship with Hito further:

She’d shown up at Hito’s door that morning because he held the possibility of distraction and the possibility of answers and Ess wanted both badly even though they were pathways in opposite directions. She wanted the name of the neurologist he’d mentioned. To get it, she had to hide who she was, hide the only salient fact about herself that she knew: her amnesia. At a dinner whose purpose was to get to know each other better. And if she gave herself away for what she really was, she’d get thrown in a cell, get her face plastered on the news, attract whoever was after her before she could even find out why she was in this mess.

Ess has to tread a fine line between getting the answers she needs while maintaining her privacy and safety, even as her feelings for Hito and his troubled younger sister Yori grow. But as unprecedented storms lash the Western seaboard, she’ll have to ask herself how far she’s willing to go in order to uncover the truth, and whether she’s willing to risk these fragile yet precious new friendships in order to reclaim a past that, it becomes increasingly clear, is perhaps not worth remembering.

Adrift is a near-future eco-thriller that raises interesting questions about identity and memory through its amnesiac heroine’s struggle to do the right thing. Lisa Brideau’s depiction of a future where climate change leads to sudden and catastrophic weather events is highly convincing. I also enjoyed the way she grappled with issues of human migration, underscoring the belief that no human being is illegal and that thoughtful, compassionate resettlement is the only moral solution to any refugee crisis.

But it’s her ruminations on memory that form the heart of this novel, as Ess tries to figure out who she is when she can’t consciously remember anything about who she used to be. A confidante tries to assure her that there’s more to her than a memory bank:

“I don’t know about amnesia”—he spoke so softly that Ess had to lean in to hear–”but even without long-term memories, I think you’re still you. The experiences that formed you still formed you, even if you don’t remember them.”

 

Ess thought about this, turning the idea over like a pebble, wanted it to be true. “Aren’t we our memories? Don’t all those experiences layer on top of each other, form us like a cake? Or a pearl? Or something else with layers. Without the memories, what’s left?”

Ess’ stubbornness and naivete can often feel exasperating as she has to continually learn to allow her body to take charge over her conscious mind, but as the solution to the mystery of who she is and what happened to her unfolds, everything about her starts making perfect sense. The contrast between the relatively small stakes of her personal life against the backdrop of high stakes climate change serves to highlight the importance of both, anchoring each in believability despite the inherently speculative nature of the fiction.