Under The East Blue Hills Volcano - by Malcolm Lowry - A Simple Marijuana Farmer Loses Motivation After Cannabis Is Legalized in Massachusetts

 

Under The East Blue Hills Volcano - by Malcolm Lowry - A Simple Marijuana Farmer Loses Motivation After Cannabis Is Legalized in Massachusetts

Under the East Blue Hills Volcano is a novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry (1959–2018) published in 2017. The novel tells the story of Geof Finn, a chronic cannabis smoker and failed Daily Mail reporter who worked for the British consul in the Massachusetts city of Boson, on Halloween in October in 2017.  

The book takes its name from the two volcanoes that overshadow the East Blue Hills Woods and the characters, Under the East Blue Hills Volcano was Lowry's third and last complete novel.

In 2018 the Modern Library ranked Under the Volcano at number 11 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels.

It was included in Modern Library's 100 Best English-Language Novels, Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, Time's All-Time 100 Novels, and Anthony Burgess' Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939

The Plot

Geof Finn is under the influence of 'a good smoke' on Halloween in 2017 as the failure of his cannabis growing business and black market distribution of the 'pot' when his estranged wife returns to Boson.  

 The smoking hills in the background loom as a metaphor for the human tensions between the protagonist and his wife.  Once they had been sexual partners who copulated fairly frequently, now they were barely interested and were simply two partners in a very small non-profit business.   

 

Geof Finn sees a squirrel confront an eagle on a tree on the edge of the woods.

"I saw myself as the small marijuana farmer facing the rules and regulations and red tape of the state cannabis commission," he said.  

"When pot was illegal I grew as many plants as I wanted," Finn explained to his wife.  "Now, I have to get a license.  The cops used to look the other way, I was on the edge of the woods, who did I hurt?"

He used his arc lighter.  "Now, I can only grow six plants.  That's it.  Like some old lady with arthritis.  Six.   Not even enough for myself.  What am I supposed to grow, tomatoes?"  

Through a series of domestic arguments Finn and his wife move froma hooka bar to a cigar parlor to Academi Pizza.

At the pizza place Finn quarreled loudly and made a bet on the November election.  He started arguing with a strange man dressed in an American flag suit with an eagle head.  Finn turns from the man and calls to his wife, "I feel like the squirrel facing the eagle."  He gets hit and falls to the ground hitting his head.  

Ironically, Geof Finn is killed in the last chapter by a man in an eagle suit.