Ask me to pick my top eco-books in a week’s time and I’d likely make entirely different choices. I started out thinking that I’d stick with novels, given I’ve just published a work of environmental fiction myself. It didn’t go quite to plan. I’ve left out, when I shouldn’t have, Powers’ The Overstory, Marklay’s The Deluge, Paull’s Pod, Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future, Jensen’s The Rapture, Catton’s Birnam Wood, and so many others that have influenced me in various ways. At least partly they’re omitted because they’re already on the Library’s shelves. But then so are several of the works I’m going to offer up. Hey ho, fiction writers are rarely reliable. So here goes…
Recommendations
That Winter the Wolf Came by Juliana Spahr
I came to this spectacular collection of poetry and shorter prose for the poem Dynamic Positioning. This poem uses the engineering issues and technical jargon behind the Deepwater Horizon disaster to construct a genuinely unique poetical journey, its cold prosody the thinnest veneer over the human and natural agony. Every piece in this marvellous collection shows a close focus on those spaces where the economic and the environmental collide.
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
Blokey and of its time, okay but this is the novel that offered the green movement ‘monkey wrenching’ and the impetus to use it. Its anarchic characterisation and joyful embrace of ecotage, alongside a fizzing prose style, make for a hugely enjoyable – and instructive, for many – read from one of the most passionate environmental advocates of his day.
Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy
It could be that Migrations is a better novel but, personally, I adore Once There Were Wolves even more. A pacy tale of an attempt to reintroduce wolves into the Scottish wilderness, it explores environmentalism, rewilding and other aspects of humanity’s complex interaction with the natural world. All this through the “mirror-tone synaesthesia” of its wounded protagonist.
The Wall by John Lanchester
In Lanchester’s gripping allegorical novel, he offers up a genuinely alarming future Britain. We follow a young man doing his national service as a Defender of the four thousand kilometre Wall surrounding the country to keep the ‘Others’ out (sound familiar?). The world has been ruined by a ‘Change’ involving abrupt sea level rises, drought and famine in the Global South, redolent of Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140. As the young man’s life unravels, the novel’s fascistic political and social system feels all too possible with a Reform prime minister on the horizon.
The Last Glacier at the End of the World by Vivian Faith Prescott
A collection of poetry by an Alaskan Sami poet living on Wrangell Island, Alaska. Beautiful, painful, viscerally immediate poems about the effect climate change is having on Sami society. Always, the ocean edging its way closer.
Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall Why do people talk demonstrably less about climate change when faced by increasingly severe flooding in their home town? Written by the founder of climate communications charity, Climate Outreach, Marshall’s book is a fascinating interrogation of the psychological and sociological reasons behind our essential difficulty accepting the environmental emergency. And he offers some excellent suggestions for activists too.
Weather by Jenny Offill
A wonderful, witty, highly contemporary novel that is, yes, about existential despair in the face of the coming climate catastrophe, but also deals marvellously with the vicissitudes of daily life and their frequently bathetic realities. “I keep wondering” Offill writes, “how we might channel all this dread into action.”
How To Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm
Is blowing stuff up as critical for the climate movement as peaceful protest? XR clearly thinks not, and many in the movement took issue with Malm. But, certainly, he offers a robust argument for ecotage. ‘Damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep on investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed.’ He offers the ANC and the suffragettes as comparative examples. Do I agree? The question forms a key theme in my novel White Road. While the younger me needed no such encouragement, my older self is more likely to write a sternly worded letter. If nothing else, Malm’s argument has proven an effective provocation.
Green is the New Red by Will Potter
As an antidote to Andreas Malm’s call to ecotage, Potter’s history-cum-courtroom-thriller follows the story of the Earth Liberation Front in the USA in the nineties and early noughties. Its particular focus is the trial, conviction and scary sentences meted out to some of its key figures, many of whom subsequently concluded that their actions changed nothing. As Potter quotes one activist, ‘It takes more courage to sit in front of a bulldozer than it does to burn one.’
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
Though Ballard’s woeful depiction of his female characters can really grate the nerves, still this stunning, eerie portrait of a drowned London, the searing sun looming hot and close above, is a work I have to re-read every few years. The world’s waters have risen, drowning near everything until the few human survivors are left picking among the ruins for scraps of their fallen civilisation. Yet always something draws them to give everything up and head south into the burning, lethal lands.
Poem of the Month
Coupling by Signe Kirkegaard Cain
Two people
moving in together
ought to
collectively
hold more money
in their four hands
but
coupling accelerates accumulation
two people now share the cost
of
bread machines
restaurant visits
long weekends
ensuring
they continue to
desire each other
plan the purchase of
garden furniture
ensuring
they continue to
have something to talk about
new people
new needs
are born
perhaps
highchairs
cargo bikes
cars with spacious boots
anything other
than accumulation
requires unlearning our native language
coupling calls for consumption
for those
who have
in the euphoria of falling in love
hearts are won with gifts
later follows
the grand gesture
of buying that first lamp
Signe Kirkegaard Cain has recently published the poetry collection Grundskyld. Her previous publications include the novel Søkvinden (2021), the nonfiction book Det handler ikke om lykke (2013) as well as poems and prose in various journals and anthologies. Signe Kierkegaard Cain also works as a translator and teacher of creative writing.
Contact our Librarian if you would like themed book lists to support teaching about climate change.
We’re always looking for contributors to our growing collection of literature to explain and explore the climate and biodiversity emergency. If you’re a writer or poet and would like to share your work or ideas, please get in touch! Contact mattroselibrary@gmail.com for prose or poetsrebelxr@gmail.com for poetry.