The new gothic accepts input from many sources: from industrial archaeology to ecofiction, from contemporary nature writing to the brutalism associated with film-maker Ben Wheatley or novelist Ben Myers. It draws as much from children’s fiction, folk music and horror cinema of the 1960s and 70s as it does from more traditionally […]
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Her stories, which are often set in West Africa, use the framework of fantasy to explore weighty social issues: racial and gender inequality, political violence, the destruction of the environment, genocide and corruption…Her novel, “Who Fears Death,” which is set in a postapocalyptic Africa, has been optioned as a series […]
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The idea that evolution could suddenly move backward may seem like an incredible fantasy, but in this dreamlike, suspenseful novel, it’s a fitting analogue for the environmental degradation we already experience. Kirkus Reviews A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly […]
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“Salvage the Bones” expands our understanding of Katrina’s devastation, beyond the pictures of choked rooftops in New Orleans and toward the washed-out, feral landscapes elsewhere along the coast. Ward’s regionalism, grounded in rurality and in poverty, gives us the images—often beautiful, always barely hiding danger—that recur throughout her books: shushing […]
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In Whipbird, Robert Drewe pulls no punches. Nothing is sacred as he takes on the mining boom and conservationists; everyone from investment bankers and real-estate agents to sea-changers and tree-changers, vegans and paleo practitioners, First World smugness, global warming, retirement, divorce, death, sudoko and artisan brewers. And the nonchalant disrespect […]
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In the latest YA novel by Métis writer and editor Cherie Dimaline, the world has been ravaged by global warming. Cities have crumbled from the coastlines, “breaking off like crust,” and hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis have wiped out entire communities. Millions of people have lost their lives, and those who […]
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When Rain Clouds Gather & Maru are two books in one. The poverty-stricken village of Golema Mmidi, in the heart of rural Botswana, offers a haven to the exiles gathered there. Makhaya, a political refugee from South Africa, becomes involved with an English agricultural expert and the villagers as they […]
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Speculative fiction usually starts with a “what if”: what if there was an environmental reckoning? What if we didn’t have enough water? What if the world was running out of food? What if that was coupled with a catastrophic global financial crisis? What would Australia look like? And how would […]
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Review of A Rain of Night Birds, by Deena Metzger Author: Mary Fillmore To read Deena Metzger’s compelling novel A Rain of Night Birds is to enter the consciousness of two people who take climate chaos and its consequences in deadly earnest. Both are professional climatologists who know the numbers, […]
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Though this eco-fiction novel was published in 2006, according to Home Town Station, Mary Alice Monroe’s novel The Beach House will be adapted into a Hallmark Channel Original Movie, starring three-time Golden Globe nominee Andie MacDowell and premiering exclusively on the network in 2017. Monroe’s novel The Butterfly’s Daughter also won […]
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Translated into English, January 2017–(originally Distancia de rescate), Fever Dream is shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. With virtuoso skill, well served in Megan McDowell’s finely textured translation, Ms Schweblin fuses a study in maternal anxiety with an ecological horror story. –The Economist Fever Dream is a nightmare […]
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Orkney, the second novel from young British writer Amy Sackville, is certainly evocative: poetic, lyrical, lush in texture. But while this is its strength, the line between beautifully written and over-written is a fine one. –The Independent This is lovely: a beautifully painted story of love, obsession and loss, set […]
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An interesting novel about loneliness and our disconnection from nature. It centres on a run down city park and four main characters whose lives intersect through their use of the park. -Goodreads (Catherine, reviewer) Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads
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I’m speaking with the author and part-time lighthouse keeper just after the re-publication of her book Alaska Highway Two-Step. First published in 1993, the unusual mystery novel is set in part along the legendary route and the release of its new edition coincides with the 75th anniversary of the Highway’s […]
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Ten tales are told by the souls of animals killed in human conflicts in the past century or so, from a camel in colonial Australia to a cat in the trenches in World War I, from a bear starved to death during the siege of Sarajevo to a mussel that […]
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