Climate Anxiety Simmers in These 11 Books
Planetary warming is no longer the sole province of climate fiction. Its creeping into all kinds of writing. Our stories about environmental catastrophe used to be set in distant futures: the desolate endlessness of The Road , or the hopeless, cutthroat scrounging in the Parable of the Sower . But that kind of far-off storytelling feels like it was made for a time when the repercussions of changing climate and the inequity of natural-resource use were, in fact, far off. Must have been nice. Ecological disaster and long-term fallout are no longer rare or surprising, and theyre not limited to specific parts of the planet. One-third of Americans said they were affected by extreme weather events in the past two years, and 2022 has already brought fire and floods. Those are climate changes most obvious consequences, but its daily effects are subtle, creeping into our everyday lives. Theyre showing up as rising food prices and rampant spring windstorms . Our changing planet is stressing our relationships and limiting our choices in the short and long term. And thats showing up in fiction. An increasing number of writers are weaving climate change into their domestic dramas or their comedies of errors as an unavoidable part of life today or in the very near future. Environmental degradation isnt the main thrust of these novels, like it may have been in classic climate fiction. In some ways, this shift represents our growing distaste for preachy stories about inevitable climatic doom. Its also just an example of fiction reflecting our reality. But this new breed of environmental novel can make the stakes of future choices, and their effects on ordinary individuals and scenarios, seem clear: When survival is on the line, books can drill into the core human question of how we take care of one another and ourselves. The books below arent about climate changetheyre about immigration, corporate malfeasance, and tourism; they focus on families, neighbors, and friends. But in each, the anxieties of our warming age force their way in, simmering quietly in the background or erupting across the page. Vigil Harbor , by Julia Glass Ten-ish years from now, in a stifling New England town fixated on its own past, an ecoterrorist attack forces members of the communityincluding recent divorcees and immigrants whose status is threatenedto confront how unstable their lives are. Glass has called Vigil Harbor , which follows a wide cast through the lead-up to and aftereffects of the incident, a near future in which the volume has been turned up. Using the attack as a prism, she shows how small-scale domestic issues, such as unhappy boomerang kids and the fate of immigrant-run landscaping companies, could be even more pressurized in that loud future. Trees fail to grow, tides overtake nearby neighborhoods, and Glass lets the hum of a collapsing ecosystem underline each strand of the plot, to show how it can make stressful situations worse, and how the threat of a rocky future can make insular people desperate and selfish. Prodigal Summer , by Barbara Kingsolver Flight Behavior , Kingsolvers book explicitly about the collapse of butterfly migration, might seem like a more obvious choice for a climate novel, but Prodigal Summer came first. Its more subtle, telling three interwoven stories about a rural Appalachian town where disorder is seeping into nature: Poachers are moving in on coyote pups, neighbors are battling over pesticides, and a young widow is trying to hold on to her in-laws family farm. Kingsolver, who was a biologist before she was a novelist, has a knack for highlighting how humans become deeply rooted to place. In outlining those small, itchy issues that can divide communities or pull them close, she puts the signal before the noise, and points out the way people who pay attention to the natural world notice it changing before they know what to do about it. The Water Knife , by Paolo Bacigalupi The Water Knife follows Angel Velasquez, a petty thug turned political assassin, as he tries to track down a valuable water source in the Southwest. It might feel a bit too much like traditional, far-future cli-fi if it werent for the current, rapidly aridifying conditions across the world and the ways western states are locked in political and logistical battles over water as the countrys biggest reservoirs shrink . Its a feat to make natural-resource laws interesting, much less thrilling, but Bacigalupi cleverly lets wonky water policy, and particularly 1922s Colorado River Compact, become the main drama of the story. When water is a rare commodity, it quickly delineates who lives and who dies. The tension is about money and power, too: As Velasquez goes deeper into a violent battle over water rights, and the compact, the one thing keeping everyone civil, falls apart, the novel shows how the laws and practices we consider fixed dont hold up in a world thats getting hotter and drier. Read: Climate fiction: Can books save the planet? Salvage the Bones , by Jesmyn Ward Its hard to show climate disaster on a personal scale, because those kinds of catastrophes tend to happen either very fast or very slowly. In Salvage the Bones , Ward drills into one familys story to outline the broad, unequal consequences of long-term environmental injustice, and the short-term trauma of destructive winds and water. Her tight narrative follows the Batiste family through the 12 days before and after Hurricane Katrina. Ward lived through the storm herself, and her visceral details of disaster, like the sound of rain on the roof and the way animals go silent before a storm, outline both the fear and the fierceness the Batistes feel as they try to protect their homes and themselves. As they prepare for landfall and then ride it out, Ward demonstrates that human drama doesnt stop for weatherthe main character, teenage Esch, is hiding a new pregnancybut it bends to it. How Beautiful We Were , by Imbolo Mbue You can probably guess how well things turn out when Pexton, a foreign-oil company, comes to the fictional West African village of Kosawa and promises the residents civilization and prosperity for use of the oil under their land. By the beginning of How Beautiful We Were , the local river is already poisoned and children are dying. But thats just the start: Mbue takes a too-familiar story about the degradation of energy extraction, corrupt government, and vulnerable communities and stretches it out over four decades, watching the characters change as the crisis drags on. Instead of a simple David and Goliath fight, the novel illustrates how different people respond to the circumstances they grew up in, who stays and who goes, and the tension between protecting yourself and fighting for whats right. Fall Back Down When I Die , by Joe Wilkins In eastern Montana, at the start of the first legal wolf hunt in more than three decades, the ranch hand Wendell Newman gets sucked into a manhunt when an anti-government fringe group takes over the event. Climate issues are appearing in divisive fights about the ways we use over-tapped public land and manage fragile populations of wild animals. Charismatic fauna, like wolves, often inflame those battles because theyre seen as both livestock-killing villains and vital parts of the ecosystem. That conflict turns violent in the book, in a way that echoes other recent standoffs over public acres, and Wilkins subtly uses that battle to point out how climate intertwines with identity politics. Wendell, who has complicated sympathies for both the rebels and the regulators, has to face up to his familys history of abuse as he picks a side. Read: A novel that imagines a world without bees 10:04 , by Ben Lerner How do you create a future you want? How much power might you have over whats to come, anyway? Those are questions at the core of 10 :04 , Lerners autofictional novel, which takes place in New York, bracketed by Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy. The narrator is an author struggling to figure out his second book. Hes wrestling with a potentially fatal medical diagnosis; deciding whether to be a sperm donor for his best friend; and wondering whether any of that is worth thinking about as the city is inundated by storms. Lerners writing spirals back on itself, retracing its own plotlines and perseverating on the same points. At turns sarcastic and overly earnest, his knotty storytelling style mimics the feeling of trying to make decisions when theres no clear answer and youre not sure how the coming yearsor the Earthwill turn out. It feels a lot like living right now. How Strange a Season , by Megan Mayhew Bergman The short stories in Bergmans collection each create their own kind of weather, like the swampy South Carolina plantation of Indigo Run and the stifling chill of a human-scale New York terrarium in Workhorse. Nearly all of the interludes touch on climate as they follow women trying to make their way through systems in which theyre complicit but not completely in charge. In A Taste for Lionfish, Lily is sent to stormy coastal North Carolina to persuade the locals to start eating invasive species as part of a job for a conservation nonprofit. Youre trying to tell these poor folks how to fix a rich folks problem, one of the locals tells Lily, as Bergman confronts an ugly truism of environmentalism: Some earnest outsider probably isnt going to come in and serve up the easy solution, and those most affected are usually the least to blame. Leave the World Behind , by Rumaan Alam Were not quite sure what the apocalypse is in Leave the World Behind , but we know something has happened to the world of Amanda and Clay, a couple of uptight Brooklynites on vacation with their kids. Theyve been cut off from all kinds of communication, and things become even weirder when their Airbnb hosts turn up, forcing them to cope with the crisis together. Of all the creepy, unknown feelings Alam accesses, the most unsettling one is uselessness. When it becomes clear that theyre in some kind of crisis, the characters, essentially, do nothing. They putter and bicker and talk behind one anothers backs, seeding suspicions and distrust. Alam shows how one crisis could quickly upend life as we know it, and how fragile the social norms that hold us together might be when that happens. Read: Writing the Pulitzer-winning The Overstory changed Richard Powerss life Here Comes the Sun , by Nicole Dennis-Benn In Here Comes the Sun , Dolores and her two daughters, a hotel worker named Margot and a teenage artist named Thandi, are stuck on the edge of a resort community in drought-stricken Jamaica, trying to work their way out of the extractive tourism industry. As the white hotel magnate Margot works for threatens to displace their home with a new resort, their ability to find other options is limited. Dolores sold Margot into sex work as a teenager, and shes trapped in that work as she tries to pay for Thandi to go to school; meanwhile the oppressive drought is making other ways of earning a living, such as farming and fishing, unstable. Dennis-Benn doesnt let anyone off easy or tie the story up neatly, and she uses the unbearable conditions as a narrative metaphor for increasing pressure. She forces the reader to consider the choices people make when resources are scarce, and the only commodity they might be able to trade is themselves. The House of Broken Angels , by Luis Alberto Urrea As his body shuts down with cancer, Big Angel, the titular character of Urreas sprawling family story, calls a final birthday party for himself, to hash out his familys regrets and try to bestow some wisdom. Nothing goes as planned. Urreas language is rhythmic and lively, and his details make a tale of impending death, gang violence, and family trauma charming and hilarious. He switches easily between gallows humor and sparks of heartfelt humanity. Drought pulses under everything, as a fact of life in Southern California and a metaphor for fighting the elements. Big Angel often flashes back to his childhood in La Paz, Baja California Sur, contrasting the vivid landscape there, where his family fished and raised animals, with the dried-out shopping malls of San Diego. But as Big Angel tries to make amends with his sparring relatives, he shows them that you can still be happy around destruction, and joyful in the face of death. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.