tom.j.atherton on Instagram: "Clarke Award Book 6This was the best book I read last year. I'm ecstatic it's on the shortlist, and not just because its nomination…"
Clarke Award Book 6This was the best book I read last year. I'm ecstatic it's on the shortlist, and not just because its nomination has given me an excuse to read it a second time. It's a masterpiece, deserving of all the love it's received.When There Are Wolves Again is a radical work of literary eco-fiction. E. J. Swift rejects both the miserabilist climate nihilism that's come to dominate the genre, *and* the hysterical tech optimism that promises us a green utopia delivered by corporatism and capital.Here hope comes from systemic and structural social changes: community and solidarity are offered as the way out of our climate predicaments. The novel spans nearly a century, and Swift utilises imagery of the occupy movement, of rainbow political alliances, and of social cohesion to offer an encouraging vision of our future.It follows the entire lives of Lucy, an environmental activist, and Hester, a film maker, from their childhood, to their intersecting old ages near the end of the 21st Century. It's profoundly moving, endlessly inventive, politically fearless, and beautifully written. Complimenting this, the book is a work of genius structural symmetry, which the nerdy formalist in me found very pleasing. Every character is distinct, with the two central women (whose chapters alternate between first and second person voices) experiencing deep emotional growth, while always feeling consistently the same people, changed through time, but with a psychological line connecting them to their childhood selves.I even liked the right-wing nationalist who antagonises Lucy throughout the novel. In my mind he doesn't know that his online handle - Britannia1412 - contains the year in which Joan of Arc was born, a foreign woman and symbol of emancipation over establishment tyranny. The irony being: he would hate the connection.It's just so vast, and so beautiful, chronicling everything from Chernobyl, to COVID, to an imagined human mission to Mars. I've never been so haunted by optimism.I don't write. I don't have the imagination, or the insight into what makes us human. Or any talent whatsoever, really. But I wish I'd written this.View all comments
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