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A review by stefhyena
Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell
hopeful
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
To be fair, I think this must be the hardest genre to write it and I always (or almost always) end up disappointed. I go into these books hoping for bold thought experiments and what they always seem to have is the sort of white, middle-class comfort that increasingly doesn't work as comfort (most people will suffer and die off screen but some of us will survive and there is so much MEANING in that).
This one did some good work in the early chapters, especially how showing that what Jude and Bernard and to some extent Sophie (though she was an unsatisfactorily left vague character) did in the early days was meaningful. I kind of forgive books like this for having these sacrificial characters that go nowhere much. But it shows that saving books was a meaningful act and that being bold to garden differently (rewild) also helped later generations as did growing food and medicinal herbs.
But then the book absolutely lost the plot with the violin. WTF was that? I love music but it was a very Eurocentric idea that the violin is somehow superior to other possibilities for the arts (and then later on the cathedral quite rightly was joined to that). Just WTF? And the greed and squandering that went into it in the book is glorified as the ultimate act of beauty and hope, what it means to be a human (but actually it's what's put us in this mess to begin with). So humans being grandiose and wasteful is posited as essential to what humanity is.
And then there are unrealistic technofetishistic things happening with a benevolent government that somehow manages to be stable (in some way that is not explained) and delivers food drops to remote communities. Yeah right! They don't even do that now that resources are relatively available! The economic and political side of things just all happens by magic and there is no war or fighting, everyone just stays middle-class (in fact anyone without middle-class white values seems to have died off). We have a respectable heteronormative society with pretty much stock-standard 50s gender roles (but inclusivity is shown by having some gay respectable relationships happen briefly in the wings of the real story) and the main protagonists who actually do stuff are men but Sophie is revered as an elder without doing much apart from gardening and there are daughters and love-interests and one violinist-turned-mother who are female.
I don't understand how women authors in the 2020s are still centring men to this extent and writing women so blandly and 2D. I would have forgiven that though if there was something here apart from nice middle-class comfort that gardening and music will somehow magically save us all while we ignore politics and economy (if only).
Also I felt uneasy at the place of nature in this book as still always just a vehicle and a tool (growing trees into benches and scarred cathedrals). There is no change to humanity here at all and therefore for me little hope. I still liked it better than Overstory.
This one did some good work in the early chapters, especially how showing that what Jude and Bernard and to some extent Sophie (though she was an unsatisfactorily left vague character) did in the early days was meaningful. I kind of forgive books like this for having these sacrificial characters that go nowhere much. But it shows that saving books was a meaningful act and that being bold to garden differently (rewild) also helped later generations as did growing food and medicinal herbs.
But then the book absolutely lost the plot with the violin. WTF was that? I love music but it was a very Eurocentric idea that the violin is somehow superior to other possibilities for the arts (and then later on the cathedral quite rightly was joined to that). Just WTF? And the greed and squandering that went into it in the book is glorified as the ultimate act of beauty and hope, what it means to be a human (but actually it's what's put us in this mess to begin with). So humans being grandiose and wasteful is posited as essential to what humanity is.
And then there are unrealistic technofetishistic things happening with a benevolent government that somehow manages to be stable (in some way that is not explained) and delivers food drops to remote communities. Yeah right! They don't even do that now that resources are relatively available! The economic and political side of things just all happens by magic and there is no war or fighting, everyone just stays middle-class (in fact anyone without middle-class white values seems to have died off). We have a respectable heteronormative society with pretty much stock-standard 50s gender roles (but inclusivity is shown by having some gay respectable relationships happen briefly in the wings of the real story) and the main protagonists who actually do stuff are men but Sophie is revered as an elder without doing much apart from gardening and there are daughters and love-interests and one violinist-turned-mother who are female.
I don't understand how women authors in the 2020s are still centring men to this extent and writing women so blandly and 2D. I would have forgiven that though if there was something here apart from nice middle-class comfort that gardening and music will somehow magically save us all while we ignore politics and economy (if only).
Also I felt uneasy at the place of nature in this book as still always just a vehicle and a tool (growing trees into benches and scarred cathedrals). There is no change to humanity here at all and therefore for me little hope. I still liked it better than Overstory.