Existential angst meets the climate crisis in this thoughtful and entertaining short story collection. Nearly every tale in this book makes reference to an impending environmental disaster whether it's two female friends living in a cliff edge home that's literally collapsing into the sea or a mother who ingests the constant news of climate change and feels “It was the end of the world and she was totally bored.” This psychological swerving between intense alarm and resigned tedium poignantly reflects the modern experience of watching the world rapidly change around us. Rees dramatises this state of being in imaginative ways including a research ship which ventures into the arctic only to encounter new/ancient forms of sinister spores and sentient bacteria, an animal park/refuge that literally goes up in flames and a dystopian future-set story about a reclusive oligarch's scheme to harness the world's first living computers. Other stories show characters developing surprising emotional attachments to seemingly anonymous concrete and metallic structures whether it's a girl finding paternal feeling in a Motorway Bridge or a new father who falls romantically in love with a pylon. It's moving how the author demonstrates the multifarious ways this admirably diverse set of characters' lives play out in the anonymous interstices of parking lots or seemingly barren fields. Rees' fiction brings to the forefront the experience of individuals in rural England who are often marginalized and relegated to the fringes of society.
Many of these psychologically complex stories are imbued with suspense and horror which makes them riveting to read. A social outcast attempts to harness astrological powers to prevent a crisis with disastrous results. One of the most disturbing tales embeds us in the consciousness of a psychopath who feels threatened by his professionally successful wife and becomes disturbingly obsessed with disposing of his household waste in their new home outside of London. Other pieces in this collection show sympathetic individuals who have grown world weary by the uneasy transition from the freedoms/possibilities of early adulthood to the responsibility-laden experiences of parenthood and home ownership. Rees also experiments with form in his stories. One of the most ambitious of these is 'The Levels' where modern life intersects with ancient occult figures in a time-bending location between land and sea. The variety in structure is consistently intriguing as is the astute levels of social commentary charting not only the climate crisis but the way society is drifting into repressive forms where the public “didn't really know what was going on. The media were in the service of the government, and the government was in the service of oligarchs”. It's also very satisfying reading this collection from start to finish as the closing story neatly makes a brief reference to events which occurred in the first. Fans of Jessie Greengrass and Sequoia Nagamatsu will particularly enjoy these stories. This is socially engaged and inventive fiction at its best.
