The Deluge
By
Stephen Markley
Reviewed by
Marilyn Freeman
Stephen Markley’s The Deluge is an ambitious novel that tackles the monumental crises facing the world in the near future. It blends speculative fiction and climate fiction with sharp political commentary and deep human insight. The story is set in the years between 2013 when clathrates on the ocean floor are found to be leaking their encapsulated methane and 2040 in the aftermath of a climate catastrophe. The novel weaves together personal stories, global tensions, and environmental collapse, offering readers ... Read more
Playground
By
Richard Powers
Reviewed by
Marilyn Freeman
Richard Powers, acclaimed author of The Overstory, delves into the deep relationship between humanity and the natural world in Playground, a novel that navigates the vast, mysterious landscapes of the ocean while offering a pointed critique of the damage we continue to inflict on our planet. For readers captivated by the ocean’s abundant life and troubled by the rapid erosion of its ecosystems, Playground presents both a moving celebration of nature’s wonders and a sobering examination of humanity’s role in ... Read more
Flight Behavior
By
Barbara Kingsolver
Reviewed by
Marilyn Freeman
In Flight Behavior, author Barbara Kingsolver creates a miracle. Not only does she imagine a scenario in which the Monarch butterflies move their overwintering site from Michoacan State, Mexico to an Appalachian mountain side in Tennessee, she also finds a way to explain climate change, ecological systems upheaval, trophic cascades, citizen science in tandem with poverty, lack of education, pushback against science, mistrust of educated elites and do it all with a great deal of compassion for the people who ... Read more
Not the End of the World
By
Hannah Ritchie
Reviewed by
Guy Hanchet
How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. This book provides evidence that the world has changed in the past and that our actions to combat climate change can make a difference even in the face of such a huge problem and in spite of what seem like insurmountable obstacles. The book gives me some comfort in the face of gloomy news of impending doom from the traditional news outlets. .
Doughnut Economics
By
Kate Raworth
Reviewed by
Marilyn Freeman
When I was 6 years old and learning about addition and subtraction, I needed to use my fingers to make those concepts real. My grade 1 teacher didn’t like that. She put my hands on the desk and rapped them with a ruler. Since then I’ve not had a good relationship with numbers. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself reading a book about economics and finding that I COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN! This marvel is Doughnut Economics: 7 ... Read more
Fire Weather, The Making of a Beast
By
John Vaillant
Reviewed by
Marilyn Freeman
Wild fires are common in Canada’s forests. But what causes an ordinary forest fire to become a fire beast, a monster that defies normal behaviour? Fire Weather, The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant, longlisted for the 2023 UK Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, is a book that explains what brings a fire monster into being at the same time as spinning a narrative that reads like the script of a horror movie. Fire Weather is centred on the ... Read more
Braiding Sweetgrass
By
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Reviewed by
Marilyn Freeman
Some years ago I had the great privilege of auditing a Trent U course called Anishnaabemowin on the Land. Camping for a week at Bon Echo Provincial Park, elders and not-so-elders had us look at the world through a different lens, a way expressed through a language so completely different from English. It was here that I learned of Braiding Sweetgrass, often referred to as the “bible” of the Indigenous students in this course. Braiding Sweetgrass was published in 2013 ... Read more
Blaze Island
By
Catherine Bush
Reviewed by
Marilyn Freeman
Way back in 2001 I read The Ingenuity Gap by Thomas Homer-Dixon, a prof at the University of Toronto. He said, “We are amazingly ingenious, but we may not be ingenious enough to manage our world and prosper within it…We crisscross the sphere in our planes, cars, and ships, subordinating all its places and resources to our needs.” We suffer from techno-hubris. We would rather look for after-the-fact solutions to the difficult problems we face than prevent the problems from ... Read more
