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miistical's review
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
"...But most importantly tell them we don't want to leave / We've never wanted to leave"
I have never felt more personally victimized by a novel. I had picked this up because of its cover and then proceeded to never put it down. The very first sentence had me gasping and that feeling continued the entire way through.
There is something almost cathartic about Warmth. The author is close in age, so his language as he describes his feelings and experiences are like listening to a friend. This novel is so personal. While there are (frankly terrifying) statistics and true journalism, it reads more like a memoir; Daniel Sherrell is sharing his view of the climate crisis with all of his complex feelings. By referring to the reader as his future child to his personal anecdotes to calling the crisis The Problem all feel like he's trying to reach out to us, to get us to sit with him and really understand what he's saying.
While some of these parts might be off-putting to some, I found them relatable. "Global warming" and "climate change" have become political buzz words—what do they mean any more? Certainly not what they were suppose to when first coined. The same with Sherrell's recounting of all the weird things he has done to reduce this ever-present stress of The Problem (considering he's a climate change activist/organizer, I get it). And framing the novel as a long letter to a child he may or may not have? Well, I get the sentiment. Who would want to bring a child into this? But when you do want a child, how can you not give them the opportunity to be loved? Is that selfish?
Sherrell doesn't really answer any of these questions, but who can? But he talks about them, which is far more than most people can bring themselves to do. He's really in the thick of it when it comes to the climate disaster we have found ourselves in, in all of its optimism and hopelessness, and I'm so grateful he wrote about it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death
_kendab's review
5.0
This book took me so long because it made me feel devastatingly seen. It’s not a book of solutions. It’s more akin to commiserating with a friend who knows exactly what you’re going through. Sometimes that’s helpful, but sometimes you need to stop and think about something else. I wish we weren’t here. Man! I wish we weren’t here.
foxmoon's review
1.0
I would describe Warmth as a mawkish slog. The whole book felt like a meandering stream-of-consciousness and the framing device of a letter to an imagined future child only further enabled this. There was also the commitment to using the euphemism “The Problem” (proper noun) to refer to climate change/global warming which only added to the tweeness and prevented me from actually modeling the real situation and its severity as I read. I usually just interpreted it as some abstract “problem,” some nothingness, some anything. There are even a few tiny sections in which the author acknowledges his privileged, straight, white, male-ness, comparing it to those in slavery and living in war-torn countries before kind of saying, “oh well,” and continuing on pondering ego-first whether or not he should feel guilty about wanting to father a child. I had to cringe. Save that shit for your journal mate or maybe actually do something with that information if you’re going to bring it up. Honestly, nothing about Warmth really sat right with me.
coralu's review
4.0
Really didn’t expect to sob while finishing this book but here we are. This book is written as a letter to Sherrell’s future child, or the possibility, the idea of a child. This premise is what the narrative revolves around, the author’s own grapplings with the problem of climate change and whether or not to bring a child into a desolate future. At times the writing could drag or spiral, but to me that felt reflective of the intangibility of the scope of climate change as a hyperobject. Other anthropologists and activists dealing with the Problem are referenced, which helped to bring in other perspectives besides Sherrell’s white-cishet-maleness. I now have lots of reading material related to the Problem on my list, and this book was a good jumping off point. The ending is certainly no prescription or explicit call to action or definitive answer, but it is emotional and heartfelt—a grief that must go hand in hand with the fight against climate change.