Literary

Heart Spring Mountain, Robin MacArthur

This week the author is reaping praise upon the release of “Heart Spring Mountain,” which tackles global warming — as well as heroin addiction and women’s struggles — at the most local level. “The resulting narrative is nuanced, poetic, and evocative,” Publishers Weekly said in a starred review. “MacArthur empathetically […]

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Weatherfronts, Sarah Butler et al.

As Peter Gingold, Director, Tipping Point, says: “This most grandiose and abstract subject is experienced at a very personal level, making its demands on the way we live with partners – or with friends, neighbours and communities. This must be fruitful.” The pieces in this collection were commissioned by TippingPoint, […]

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2047: Short Stories from Our Common Future, Tanja Rohini Bisgaard et al.

As citizens on this blue planet of ours, we are currently experiencing great changes when it comes to global warming, pollution, and toxic substances—such as microplastic—that end up in our food and our drinking water. In addition, flora and fauna are disappearing from the places where we played when we […]

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The Ocean Container, Patrik Sampler

Thanks to the author for bringing this book to our attention. First it’s about climate change and the hostility Canada has shown toward those wishing to do something about it. It’s also about the role of artists at a time of political crisis. And it’s psychological, exploring the mind of […]

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Rain Birds, Harriet McKnight

This novel is an example of an emerging form in literature: the realist novel in which climate change is no longer science fiction but already an integral part of the real and familiar world. –The Sydney Morning Herald Rain Birds is a powerful and lyrical novel about love, grief and […]

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Our Memory Like Dust, Gavin Chait

  Chait follows three main characters through a brilliantly imagined near-future Africa ravaged by war, climate change, jihadi cults and multinational companies…He interweaves ecological and political intrigue with Senegalese folk myths to tell the ultimately uplifting story of a continent sadly neglected in SF. –The Guardian‘s best science fiction, fantasy, […]

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The Crows of Beara, Julie Christine Johnson

Beautifully crafted with environmental themes, a lyrical Irish setting, and a touch of magical realism, The Crows of Beara is a breathtaking novel of how the nature of place encompasses everything that we are. Goodreads Reviews Back to Goodreads

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Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward

“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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Whipbird, Robert Drewe

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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The Coyote Hunter of Aquidneck Island, James Conroy

James Conroy, a popular novelist, moved to Newport in the summer of 2010. The coyote issue was getting notice, sporadically, in the local press. This month, with the publication of “The Coyote Hunter of Aquidneck Island,” Conroy’s fictionalized account of Middletown’s solution to the dilemma may get some press attention […]

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The Sunken Cathedral, Kate Walbert

From the National Book Award nominee and author of the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling A Short History of Women, a deeply moving, “lyrical, ominous, and unexpectedly funny” (Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers) novel that follows a cast of characters as they negotiate one of Manhattan’s swiftly changing neighborhoods, […]

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Oink. A Food for Thought Mystery, JL Newton

Thanks to the author, who told me that her new novel “engages with many environmental themes and tries to enlarge the meaning of ‘deep ecology.’” More from JL Newton My novel, Oink. A Food for Thought Mystery, is a sly send up of universities in general for their ever increasing […]

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Ursocrypha: The Book of Bear, Katie Welch

Thanks to author Katie Welch for writing in to tell us about her novel The Bears (republished as Ursocrypha: The Book of Bear in January 2017). When an oil pipeline in Northern British Columbia ruptures, the ensuing environmental disaster precipitates a crisis for activist Gilbert Crow, arctic researcher Anne McCraig, […]

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Orkney, Amy Sackville

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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Clay, Melissa Harrison

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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