Jeff VanderMeer's Favorite Climate Fiction Novels
While I've chosen purely speculative novels, the sobering reality is that we are living in the middle of a climate crisis now and thus any contemporary novel can grapple with it — say, a romance set in Houston where flooding swamps the city during a hurricane. Similarly, novels from and about the past can easily be re-contextualized as speaking to our current situation. While most would point to Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' as climate fiction, you might just as easily look to his earlier novel 'Blood Meridian,' where the past seems like prologue to our present.
The novels I recommend below — many of which I've championed in the past — may reassure simply by being so clearly fictional. I worry that, in the decades ahead, they will come to seem ever more realistic. But don't fret: Grim monotone makes for a boring novel, so there's a liveliness to my selections that I hope will challenge and reinvigorate readers — even amid the darkness.
Private Rites
This novel by the author of the widely acclaimed 'Our Wives Under the Sea' posits a near-future of constant rain and flooding in Britain. Against this backdrop, three sisters try to make sense of both the changing climate and the death of their father, a lauded architect whose creations include their family home. In the aftermath of his passing, the women — Isla, Irene and Agnes — return to the house, where their father's influence on not just the past but the present and future becomes clear in startling and evocative ways. The sui generis quality of 'Private Rites' comes from its beautiful rendering of mundane life and loss juxtaposed with a soggy, almost Gothic atmosphere.
Read our review.
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Jeff VanderMeer's Favorite Climate Fiction Novels
As a writer who engages with climate issues in my fiction, I can be picky about such portrayals by other writers. I'm less interested in factual veracity than I am in the psychological truth of the lived-in moment: Fiction, I feel, is less suited to prediction or policy recommendations than it is to immersing readers in situations that show the reality of what an experience might feel like. While I've chosen purely speculative novels, the sobering reality is that we are living in the middle of a climate crisis now and thus any contemporary novel can grapple with it — say, a romance set in Houston where flooding swamps the city during a hurricane. Similarly, novels from and about the past can easily be re-contextualized as speaking to our current situation. While most would point to Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' as climate fiction, you might just as easily look to his earlier novel 'Blood Meridian,' where the past seems like prologue to our present. The novels I recommend below — many of which I've championed in the past — may reassure simply by being so clearly fictional. I worry that, in the decades ahead, they will come to seem ever more realistic. But don't fret: Grim monotone makes for a boring novel, so there's a liveliness to my selections that I hope will challenge and reinvigorate readers — even amid the darkness. Private Rites This novel by the author of the widely acclaimed 'Our Wives Under the Sea' posits a near-future of constant rain and flooding in Britain. Against this backdrop, three sisters try to make sense of both the changing climate and the death of their father, a lauded architect whose creations include their family home. In the aftermath of his passing, the women — Isla, Irene and Agnes — return to the house, where their father's influence on not just the past but the present and future becomes clear in startling and evocative ways. The sui generis quality of 'Private Rites' comes from its beautiful rendering of mundane life and loss juxtaposed with a soggy, almost Gothic atmosphere. Read our review. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
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