Cynan Jones (Everything I Found on the Beach; Cove) beautifully reprises his distinctive voice and poignant themes in Stillicide, a novel of climate change and human relationships. This novella-length meditation excels in its thoughtful considerations, quietly lyrical language and memorable lines and characters.
Water is rare and sought after. A water train has replaced the old pipeline to bring this commodity into cities, which are resented by the surrounding countryside. The train is armed: "Deer. Dog. Man. If it was still alive and present when the water load passed, the defence guns of the train would fire automatically." In the opening chapter, a marksman stands by as additional security, life and death in his hands. Meanwhile, the authorities plan to replace the water train with a new and wider corridor, to drag an iceberg overland into the city. "A gash cut through the city," this will displace many residents; protestors gather.
The subsequent chapters focus on different characters and their perspectives. A construction worker for the new iceberg path wonders if his work is for good or ill, and contemplates the work of his partner, who makes flowers from refuse to plant "in the cracks of the kerbs." A young nurse contemplates an affair; an older nurse lies dying. A boy chases a stray dog through the streets. An elderly couple on the coast refuses to move inland even as they see the future approaching. These perspectives note where the natural world still gleams in a city increasingly dry and dusty--aphids, butterflies, the rare deer, "sparrows and pigeons, as if from nowhere." A professor finds evidence of an endangered species in the iceberg's path, and with it hope: "A dragonfly could stop an iceberg. For a while at least." Many of these characters remain nameless, so that even in their specificity they stand in for a larger human experience, and the effect is that this thirsty world is a little blurred.
Stillicide is a sobering consideration of a possible near future, and a moving work of fiction. Jones is easy to appreciate also for his writing, for the poetry in "the contained clatter of the runnelled rain." The marksman guarding the water train, where the novel both begins and ends, drives home questions about what to value and protect, and when to let go. This is a quiet masterpiece of language, imagination and grim possibility. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia
Shelf Talker: This minimalist meditation on climate change and human choices offers stark realism, haunting characters and lovely lyricism.