A review by kleonard
Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell

4.0

Arboreality will probably become a must-read book in the genre of cli-fi. A series of stories interlinked by place and people and plants, it's an imagining of a world vastly altered by rising seas, rising temperatures, and changing species. It probably deserves that role, as a must-read, but it's also very sentimental, at times maudlin. It's not always easy to identify with the characters, some of who are intensely self-pitying and others who don't feel particularly real. The central story, about a man crafting a violin, focuses on the kinds of behaviors the future might bring: he poaches wood from protected forests, fells a rare sitka spruce, and buys black-market wood from Africa in order to make his ultimate instrument. He justifies all of it: making art requires sacrifice. But ultimately, the stories suggest that it wasn't worth it, that while some small communities might survive and even thrive in some ways, the end is nigh, for individuals and for everything but the plants and animals that will outlive humankind.