In his 2016 work The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh wrote that a true representation of climate change in “serious” literature was not possible. How can we, as small, insignificant beings, possibly face up to the overwhelmingly urgent problem of climate change? With fictions of extreme weather events and natural disasters often limited to the escapism of sci-fi or dystopia, it can become challenging to bring climate crisis discussions into our everyday lives.
Since 2016, however, there has been a marked increase in novels that deal with the climate crisis. Just as the Victorians were enchanted with science and religion, and the Edwardians of rapid industrialisation, one of the (many) cultural zeitgeists of the 21st century seems to be concerned about the natural world slipping away from human control.
As someone who is often stubbornly focussed on reading older “realist” novels, modern climate fiction is not something I had particularly bothered with until recently. However, it seems to me that climate fiction is the most realist we can get, and perhaps a wake-up call to what our future holds. This article is a starting guide to this multifaceted genre. Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones transports us to the fictional town of Bois Sauvage in 2005 Mississippi, following 15-year-old Esch in a remarkable 12-day narrative. Whilst the reader anticipates the incoming danger of Hurricane Katrina, Esch is preoccupied with how to reveal to her brothers and father that she is pregnant. With beautiful prose and sweeping descriptions of natural landscapes, the whole novel feels like an agonisingly tense waiting game for the hurricane to arrive, bringing up poignant reflections on the uncertainty of our future along the way.
We move into an urban setting with Ben Lerner’s 10:04, with upper-middle class New York City being much further removed from climate destruction. The first-person narrative follows semi-autobiographical protagonist Ben, who watches the destruction of Hurricanes Irene and Sandy unfold on TV from the sanctum of his apartment. Lerner’s self-reflexive approach covers many topics, from the ethics of having children to the meta nature of art. Though I can’t say I fully understood the book, it’s well worth a read.
Another strangely disorientating book is Alexandra Kleeman’s Something New Under the Sun. Kleeman’s protagonist Patrick Hamlin travels from the East Coast to Hollywood to be a production assistant in the movie adaptation of his own novel. As the creative control of his own work slips from him, Patrick’s world becomes increasingly tinged with eco-anxiety, presented through the privatisation and commercialisation of water, which seems to be causing early onset dementia to the people around him. Kleeman’s lucid descriptions of Patrick’s descent into madness become chillingly apocalyptic by the novel’s end. These three books are only the start of what is becoming a long list of climate change novels.
I always recommend trying a new genre – it might start your next new obsession.
Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash
