Literary Vice

I’m trying to remember the name of the book I reviewed here that was about the near future, climate catastrophe, parenting, and some biblical themes. I really liked it. The bible part is what did it: A Children’s Bible.

Why am I trying to remember that one? Because Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore reminded me of it – similar theme of how to parent amid the climate collapse, of how to not only explain to our children the destruction and loss, but to prepare them for the present and future of suffering and inequality and grief.

Wild Dark Shore manages to keep you reading what might otherwise be too overwhelming an indictment of our inaction and paralysis of the scale of the problem by placing the themes amid a gentle mystery and a (albeit somewhat implausible) romance.

The mystery: a woman washes up on the shores of Shearwater island – a remote island where there is one family who are there to protect Earth’s last seed banks until the seeds can be moved to a safer location (the sea levels are rising, permafrost melting and the seed bank is no longer safe) (if such a location even exists). As she recovers and we learn why she is there, she begins to uncover suspicious things and witness strange behaviours from the family. What, the reader wonders along with her, happened here.

From there plenty of implausible plot points follow – and I enjoyed and liked the book too much to take much issue with them – but there is a host of things that just… didn’t seem likely (at all), but I allowed because the writing was beautiful and, perhaps, because I wanted them to be possible (the romance not the least of them).

But what the book does best (at least, I think) is make palpable the choices that climate catastrophe have forced on those parts of the world already most impacted and will – are – forcing on the privileged like me through the pressing decisions around the seeds, but also – and most evocatively – in the choices about what to do with/for/by our children. What sacrifices ought we have made already or should we be making to the future (and no, this isn’t an argument for effective altruism, more a practical question of what can one generation reasonably do to better the outcomes for the next).

The climactic scene – while perhaps too on the nose and overly layered with Symbol – brings this question to a head and the reader is left mourning not just the particular loss for the family, but through this synecdoche our greater loss as a planet.

Anyway. It’s not a perfect book by any stretch, but it will make you feel something about our planet and our connection to it – and that is no small feat.