The Girl in the Road

The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne feels singular. What stands out is the bold, female, first person voice of Meena. (Mariama’s voice is not quite as vivid, though Byrne ably balances the child’s sometimes skewed perspective.) Some time 20 to 50 years in the future, two individuals embark on perilous journeys – young Mariama, born into slavery and separated from her mother, across the width of Africa in a truck caravan – and Meena, a college dropout from IIT-Bombay whose parents were murdered in Ethiopia and who sets out to cross (illegally) the Trans-Arabian Linear Generator, an energy-producing pontoon bridge that stretches from Mumbai to Djibouti. Both have been propelled on their journey by snake attacks that may not be all they seem; their back stories are filled in as the novel and their travels progress, and we learn more about how their stories might relate to one another.

         There are intriguing sci fi concepts here – it’s a world affected by climate change where today’s “developing world” is the center of global investment. Addis Ababa is the happening city of modern Africa. (One of the central conflicts of the book is the treatment of Ethiopian workers and the colonial-capitalist exploitation of Ethiopian resources by Indian businesses. I don’t know whether there is actually a history of migration between those two countries from which this future is extrapolated, but I can think of plenty contemporary parallels, for example, the treatment of Indian guest workers in the Middle East.) Alternative energy is crucial, from the solar Sun Traps of Sudan to, centrally, the TALG or Trail, with its pioneering wave energy and its controversial use of metallic hydrogen (a valuable but potentially unstable superconductor). Then there are the casual extrapolations of near-future tech, like “mitters” for wireless transfer of funds (far more common than cash) and the “glotti” translator.

         The novel describes a classic man vs. nature conflict – if we take man to mean woman and accept a future in which nature, even the deepest sea, is inherently compromised by the man-made. The TALG or Trail is an inhospitable as environments come, the path one of lunging peaks and troughs, intermittently submerging itself to allow the passage of ships. Food and potable water must be extracted from the surrounding sea or obtained through encounters with dangerous strangers; the sun and the solitude are brutal. Importantly, beyond the survival story itself, The Girl in the Road also asks what it means to be “a survivor.”

         But I’d say this is a book about sex. (I have a kneejerk tendency to lament: why does a book with an interesting, fresh female protagonist have to be about sex and relationships? But isn’t my assumption that a plot based in science is superior to one saturated in sex, with its suggestion that action-adventure is more worthwhile than romance, problematic in itself? Then, too, as I write, I think maybe I should reconsider my categorization: as central as human sexuality is to this novel, to the characters and themes, perhaps at its heart it’s a book about love.) It’s not clear whether Meena is bipolar or just impulsive, but her inner monologue thrusts the reader into her physicality as much or more than her strategizing, and her relationship with the hijra Mohini becomes just as compelling as the mysteries of who killed her parents and how Mariama’s African journey connects to her water-walk. While I’m not sure whether of the book’s elements are intriguing comments on the theme or problematic plot shortcuts (some of the hallucinations, for instance) The Girl in the Road is a fascinating pageturner that rips through the boundaries of more than one or two genres in its global travels.