At the very start of this, I am warning both you and me that this will be a difficult review to write. Five hundred and sixty-three pages of a rambling story about the future, imagined as one where the planet degradation is so pronounced that a single person, a middle-aged woman named Mary Murphy, leaves her very Irish roots and pulls together a group, growing from a single member (her) to a colossal international force for environmental and governmental change. The book's thread meanders, actually careens around this thin line of a plot and is interspersed with seemingly random excursions into so many different quick shifts that it left me re-reading to try and understand the need for this and for that change.
Some random tidbits from my notes: Lots of German and Swiss-German words since much of the story takes place in Zurich; technical excursions and calculations into such areas as how many tons of fossil fuel burned per year equates to a specific temperature increase; lists of extinct mammals; a treatise on the Gini Coefficient (a measure of income and wealth disparity in a population... hint it is increasing rapidly); movement of large Antarctic glaciers over solid rock as they melt; how Carbon Dioxide is created and absorbed; and Modern Monetary Theory. Whew!
The story starts with a killer heat wave in India in 2025 and expands with extreme weather events accompanied with drastic countermeasures taken by governments. Sea level rises accompany huge migration movements (ten percent of the population) as well as the loss of twenty percent of the world's food supplies. A draconian but foreseeable series of these events leads to illegal and horrific counter measures by protesters including crashing most of the international air traffic by some sort of unstoppable drones, as well as the submersible drone downing of container ships and of course the concomitant stock market crash.
There are very good explanations of carbon dioxide formation and deletion, as well as modern monetary theory. One strange aspect of the story (to me) is the inclusion of a character who initially attempts to kidnap and/or capture Mary Murphy, but somehow with whom she bonds as he spends his life in prison. That simply did not work with this reader.
All in all, the story seems to be a paeon to the brilliance and breadth of interests of the author. The vocabulary usage is impressive and will send most of us to the dictionary from time to time. The story could have been more powerful and less difficult to read sans many of the intellectual side trips. A challenging and interesting read if you can stick with it.
Comments are welcome and will be published, pro and con. Make your observations below or send them to me via email at n3bb@mindspring.com. Email commenters will not be identified unless requested.
Enjoy life; it's the only one we will get.
J.K. (Jim) George
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