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sterling8 's review for:
Arboreality
by Rebecca Campbell
This book is s series of interconnected short stories in chronological order (mostly?). It follows a small group of people living on Vancouver Island through the throes of climate change.
This book was depressing for me, which is one reason I didn't rate it higher. The other reason is that the author focused a lot on the collapse of connection to the larger world and to the dissolution and abandonment of everything, and I'm just not sure that's how it will go.
For example, the first story is about two faculty at a university taking books out of the library and distributing them to people they know because the library is falling into disrepair and no one will fix it, and weather is creeping in to damage the books. Would a university library really just be abandoned.
Next story is a guy in a neighborhood who is rewilding his lawn and whose neighbor still meticulously mows, sprays weedkiller, and has no interest in the natural flora of their home. But the lawn guy dies, his home is abandoned, and it seems the rest of the neighborhood just kind of leaves too except for the rewilding guy. I still have a hard time with the idea that people will abandon perfectly good homes to go... elsewhere without taking their valuables, selling the property to some entity, just all gone. Another apocalyptic book I've read also posited this, and I have a hard time with the idea of abandoning shelter for nothing in return when that shelter hasn't been destroyed.
Then we have people creeping back into these abandoned neighborhoods to scavenge, linoleum, wire, copper pipes, all the valuable stuff that's taken now when a home is destroyed. We have no central authority whatsover, just a women growing weed and vegetables to feed herself and her loved ones who becomes the wise woman of the... village, town, who knows?
I guess that my POV is throughout all of humanity's development, we have tended to organize ourselves, to have some sort of system of compensation and community and way to spread learning, and this has increased rather than decreased almost without fail. It was nice to see the stories developing toward a new way of doing things that might be more sustainable and just. I just don't know if everything has to (or makes sense to) fall into utter ruin first. War is different, obviously, but even in war a lot of the fight is over who is going to be in charge- it's rare that there is absolutely no one to look to, even a bad choice.
This book was depressing for me, which is one reason I didn't rate it higher. The other reason is that the author focused a lot on the collapse of connection to the larger world and to the dissolution and abandonment of everything, and I'm just not sure that's how it will go.
For example, the first story is about two faculty at a university taking books out of the library and distributing them to people they know because the library is falling into disrepair and no one will fix it, and weather is creeping in to damage the books. Would a university library really just be abandoned.
Next story is a guy in a neighborhood who is rewilding his lawn and whose neighbor still meticulously mows, sprays weedkiller, and has no interest in the natural flora of their home. But the lawn guy dies, his home is abandoned, and it seems the rest of the neighborhood just kind of leaves too except for the rewilding guy. I still have a hard time with the idea that people will abandon perfectly good homes to go... elsewhere without taking their valuables, selling the property to some entity, just all gone. Another apocalyptic book I've read also posited this, and I have a hard time with the idea of abandoning shelter for nothing in return when that shelter hasn't been destroyed.
Then we have people creeping back into these abandoned neighborhoods to scavenge, linoleum, wire, copper pipes, all the valuable stuff that's taken now when a home is destroyed. We have no central authority whatsover, just a women growing weed and vegetables to feed herself and her loved ones who becomes the wise woman of the... village, town, who knows?
I guess that my POV is throughout all of humanity's development, we have tended to organize ourselves, to have some sort of system of compensation and community and way to spread learning, and this has increased rather than decreased almost without fail. It was nice to see the stories developing toward a new way of doing things that might be more sustainable and just. I just don't know if everything has to (or makes sense to) fall into utter ruin first. War is different, obviously, but even in war a lot of the fight is over who is going to be in charge- it's rare that there is absolutely no one to look to, even a bad choice.