Critiques et Commentaires

The author's note poses this novel as a rebuff to the perennial speculative fiction question, "Are Women Human?" and in portraying a breadth of humanity in a world of only women it is a marvelous and strange sci-fi blend of colonialism, anthropology, deep time, violence and fear, and yes feminism.

Situated beautifully by Robert MacFarlane's introduction, a closely observed love of a nearby and natural and ecological space through seasons and life, an ode to mountain landscape once we look past getting to the top.

Lovely reflection essays on lessons learned from family, mentors, influences and encounters. Themes of mindfulness, patience, practice, interconnection, and of course theatre and language.

Memoir and memories of growing up, striking out, and writing, in reflection and tension with her exceptional strong-willed mother - this is mostly the author's life story, and it's a fiercely and funny one that captures the dependence and independence of her younger selves well looking back from her 60s.

(Originally published 1908)

From the introduction, "I went through a dark period, in which the world seemed to have shrunk. The world seemed to be the size of my pocket, in which was a phone."

Last read as a kid, re-read with my daughter. Really well-paced classic swashbuckling kid-on-an-adventure, mis-steps and mutiny and murders move quickly along.

Last read as a kid, re-read with my daughter, remains a quick-paced inventive fantasy adventure, I only had to skip over a few racist descriptions. I had more fun singing the songs as an adult than they were when I was a kid, could even have used a few more!

A tumbling of traumatic scenes in hell and in university, a logical-paradox-driven magick gives as many fun revisits to mathematical puzzles as to Dante's Inferno or the Rigveda. Less convinced of the plot and character motivations, but the pace keeps up well enough.

A few wonderfully interlinked generations on Vancouver Island in catastrophic decline and re-imagining of forest.

Ghosh's non-fiction "The Great Derangement" explores the role of literary fiction in dealing with climate and colonialism, and the modern novel's turn to telling stories about the individually inwardly probable vs our condition of surprising and irrational experiences of nature and disaster. "Gun Island" is his response on climate and desperate migration, with increasingly improbable coincidence and unease challenging the protagonist's grip on scientific realism.

Not great literature! Did E.T. need this sequel? No. But for the middle grade plot and Eliot-as-a-fumbling-hormonal-pre-teen, this was a fun absurdist romp on E.T.'s home planet acting out a 1000-year-old miscreant getting "in the soup".

A challenge, a surrender. Climate change advocate becomes disenchanted with the "believe the science" dogmatic and othering polarization, wants to withdraw into a more contested, other-ways-of-knowing, art's-more-than-a-message-deliverer, science-is-also-what-got-us-here. BUT global covid response was his limit: we should be more accepting of death, too much of the book is his fears of the authoritarian-science alignment of vaccine mandates and none of the book considers the anti-science factions his discomforts are in dialog against. Another path is ahead, and he's humble in not having answers to what that is or where it goes, instead like Hospicing Modernity asks us to sit with the discomfort. Indeed.

In the range of Tchaikovsky stories, this is good but not great - our expectation of still being the last around to see the desolation of an unliveable climate is neatly confronted, and the Roadside Picnic references land, but the plot and motivation did not.

A familiar fairytale form with each turn twisted or flipped just right with a light touch.