Month: December 2019

“The Testaments” is not, repeat is not, a sequel to Margaret Atwood’s revolutionary dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Indeed it could not follow that classic novel’s trajectory, if only because the TV series has usurped the plot. Instead Atwood reexamines the perverted, horrific world of Gilead, commencing a decade and a half later, and switching from a claustrophobic single viewpoint to three interwoven narratives, two of handmaids and one of ruthless Aunt Lydia. Atwood is among the world’s most assured novelists, each word and sentence carefully chosen, and the story zips along pleasingly. By the halfway point, one spies an overall arc and then races to uncover the dramatized endgame, and the overall read is intriguing and satisfying. But the deep immersion in political terror that “The Handmaid’s Tale” engendered is missing and the plot-driven structure distanced this reader somewhat from any of the three characters. If you’re a fan of the original, this is a must-read, but “The Testaments” will surely not sit as the same class of classic.

Jon Gertner, NYT journalist and historian, has penned a modern masterpiece of natural history at the outer edge of climate change science with “The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future.” Greenland has never been on my reading list but from the first page, Gertner propels a spellbinding, eloquent account of the history of that frozen mass. The first seven chapters recount macho death-defying exploration, the rousing tales of Nansen and Peary at the end of the nineteenth century, crossing and exploring one of earth’s last and most forbidding frontiers. Rasmussen and Wegener take the story through the first half of the twentieth century, still mostly raw exploration, but an emerging realisation of the scientific secrets locked in Greenland’s ice morphs the tale after World War II towards knowledge. Gertner is brilliant describing how American Cold War might and money transformed the frozen waste into an air base and a science Camp Central (eventually crushed by the ice). Ice core drilling into the eighties is described in thrilling terms. When it was realized Greenland had begun melting, albeit slowly at first, airplane surveying at first, and then satellite blanketing, began to pursue astonishing science: how much ice is on Greenland and how is it changing? Gertner’s thrilling account of the 2010s includes images of cautious glaciologists stunned by the accelerating ice melt. Rising sea levels beckon, far faster than anyone predicted. “So we have very little time,” Gertner warns, “a few years, maybe a few decades.” Every thinking human should read “The Ice at the End of the World” tomorrow.

Ten years ago, Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” proved to be instrumental in shifting me towards vegetarianism, so naturally I gravitated to his altogether new take on the subject in “We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast“.” But whereas the first was a polemic for vegetarianism, “We Are the Weather” turns out to be a remarkable philosophical exploration of the terror and meaning of climate change in the Anthropocene Era. Sure, Foer is now recommending we all just skip meat for breakfast and that this alone would greatly impact global carbon emissions, but that fades before the power of his intelligence and prose in addressing the heartbreak and attendant nihilism that any sensible appraisal of our future entails. His penultimate chapter, “Dispute with the soul,” is extraordinary, a dialogue of one mind with itself, oscillating between despair and various forms of hope. I felt the author had a direct line into my head as I read it, and I’ve returned to the teasing, looping discussion again and again. Throughout the book, Foer’s prose is personal and precise and elegant: “There is a far more pernicious form of science denial than Trump’s: the form that parades as acceptance. Those of us who know what is happening but do far too little about it are more deserving of the anger.” Ah, so true. I predict this lively, wise reflection will remain a classic for years. Go grab it, it won’t fail you.