I have been thinking a lot about narrative lately, which is perhaps not surprising, given that I’m a novelist and nonfiction writer, and narrative is where I spend a lot of my time and attention.
What I have been thinking about is not the pleasures and challenges of making a story, but rather the pitfalls of narrative when it is applied to the climate crisis.
Recently, I read two books from nature writers I admire. The first was a collection of fragments by the Scottish poet, Kathleen Jamie, entitled Cairn. The book is composed of micro-essays, meditations, and poems, about the current state of the natural world resulting from the climate crisis. These clear-eyed observations, piled one on top of the other, like rocks in a cairn, work together to…
