I am not so into the nowadays popular "chick-lit" (those novels like "Confessions of a shopaholic" actually give me goosebumps), but recently I've been reading some good "eco-lit" novels. The concept of eco-lit still needs to be branded though - here's my shot. (This is also my first shot of being a literature blogger.)
First I read the novel of one of my favourite authors Margaret Atwood: The Year of the Flood (2009) (in Finnish: Herran tarhurit). It's set somewhere in the future and describes a world of frightening technological developments and weird results of gene manipulation. Our near future in its gloominess is approaching biblical dimensions and the catastrophic developments have their sources in the recognizable present day developments. It is not only a story of an ecological disaster but also recounts the social division between the rich, in their barricaded neighbourhoods, and the rest (also rings a bell). The book has an Orwellian dimension in its description of private police forces protecting the giant corporation actually ruling the world (could be Monsanto...). The protagonists belong to an eco-tribe that combines in its ideology science, biblical announcements and a green way of living. The novel is actually science-fiction but the message is clearly related to the current state of affairs. Most probably for this reason its story is so fascinating and scary.
An even gloomier image of our future is depicted in Cormac McCarthy's excellent novel The Road (2006) (in Finnish: Tie). Something like a waterless flood or fire storm has swiped across the continent where a boy and his father are walking on the road trying to find food and avoid malicious bands of cannibals. Even though there is not much action in the book, it holds the reader as if watching a horror movie, the tension McCarthy has created is just amazing. While the reason for the disaster is never revealed, it is easy to understand that it is related to some man-made environmental catastrophe: the forests are burning, the roads have melted, the civilization has perished. It also poses an interesting question: what happens when the structures of the society vanish and there's no rule of law or state monopoly of violence, how can we re-organise a civilized (or even nutritionally sustainable) way of life and what makes solidarity and peaceful cooperation between people possible? The underlying story goes to the very bottom of humanity and society. Eco-lit is pretty gloomy and, based on this novel, more inclined to cause depression than positive action...
Here's the trailer for the film based on this book. I haven't seen the whole film but it looks like worth watching, though the writing in the novel doesn't necessitate any audiovisual guidance, I saw the happenings right in front of my eyes when reading The Road.
Here's the trailer for the film based on this book. I haven't seen the whole film but it looks like worth watching, though the writing in the novel doesn't necessitate any audiovisual guidance, I saw the happenings right in front of my eyes when reading The Road.
The third eco-lit experience of mine was a Finnish novel "Sarasvatin hiekkaa" (2005) (in English: The Sands of Sarasvati, not translated into English but there is a translated comic book based on the novel) by Risto Isomäki. This is the one of these three novels most openly about an ecological catastrophe (The Road is maybe more about the consequences, and the end of the civilization).
Sarasvatin hiekkaa is an ecological thriller set in around year 2020: several scientists around the world are working on unrelated phenomena. However, as it turns out, things are all worryingly connected: an ancient city sunk in the Indian Ocean just like the Atlantis tale tells us, a suddenly vanished arctic lake near Greenland, gas eruptions in the bottom of the sea, a man trying to build snow-producing wind mills to prevent the melting of the icebergs. Isomäki is a science journalist and author himslef so the facts are pretty much correct and also much more interesting than the romantic sidelines in the novel. This is a description of how it could happen - how the world would come to an end as we know it; the icebergs would melt, the sea level would rise, a mega tsunami would hit the continents destroying cities and leaving people in destitution. But this is only the end of the book, the fascinating part is the "how and why". Isomäki tells the story of global warming and climate change in popular terms making geology, chemistry, marine archeology, history and geography all sound like the most exciting things in the world. It's a wonderful mix of separate fields of culture and science - and a handful of (quite well-founded) pessimism.
Sarasvatin hiekkaa is an ecological thriller set in around year 2020: several scientists around the world are working on unrelated phenomena. However, as it turns out, things are all worryingly connected: an ancient city sunk in the Indian Ocean just like the Atlantis tale tells us, a suddenly vanished arctic lake near Greenland, gas eruptions in the bottom of the sea, a man trying to build snow-producing wind mills to prevent the melting of the icebergs. Isomäki is a science journalist and author himslef so the facts are pretty much correct and also much more interesting than the romantic sidelines in the novel. This is a description of how it could happen - how the world would come to an end as we know it; the icebergs would melt, the sea level would rise, a mega tsunami would hit the continents destroying cities and leaving people in destitution. But this is only the end of the book, the fascinating part is the "how and why". Isomäki tells the story of global warming and climate change in popular terms making geology, chemistry, marine archeology, history and geography all sound like the most exciting things in the world. It's a wonderful mix of separate fields of culture and science - and a handful of (quite well-founded) pessimism.
I need to make another blog entry about Isomäki's idea of snow-producing wind mills... or other gadgets that are actually being invented and experimented in order to avoid a catastrophe similar to the one in Isomäki's novel. They are reality, showing that Sarasvatin hiekkaa is not only science fiction.
All above-mentioned books deserve 5 stars although based on very different literary grounds. As I said, it's no light reading thematically but these were books that really stayed in my mind for a long time afterwards (indeed, I read Atwood already in August). I'm already looking forward to my next eco-lit adventures, recommendations are welcome!
