I first heard about this book last year. It was marketed as the powerful new debut, some mix of sci-fi and literary fiction. It seemed dark, bleak - barrelling towards a depressing ending. That description reminded me of A Little Life, which I found to be one of the most memorable books I have ever read in my entire life. I wanted to try it.

This book imagines a second American Civil War in an America afflicted by the ravages of climate change. There is a book by Kim Stanley Robinson that also purported to depict America in a climate changed world. From what I hear, that story is more optimistic - the triumph of the human spirit over climate change. This one makes no bones about - climate change sucks for the vulnerable people who have to take the brunt of it head on.

I do not think that there is a single good person in this book (with the possible exception of the narrator) - everyone has some sort of horrible flaw about them. They are operating under delirious illusions or patriotism or just pure hate. The main character of the novel, Sarat Chestnut, is the latter. She runs on a pure hate that is strangely admirable in its independence and lack of partisanship. She does not hate people because they are from the North or the South. She hates them all for warring in the first place.

This is a book that tries to get us to mourn the loss of a woman’s innocence. I am not sure it does the job all that well. But what it does do extremely well is get us to understand the plight of the refugee - and it is not hard to imagine that the experience Sarat feels (and the hate that comes from it) is one shared (and will share) by millions of people around the world.

This book presents a riddle with no answer - where does the hate come from? It destroys from the inside out. It is unhealthy, it is a disease. Yet at the same time Sarat indulges in it so fully. This book turned out to be like watching a train in slow motion as it crashes into a crowd of people - watching it as the brakes blow out and the conductor dead at the wheel. I could not turn away.

I recommend reading this book. It helped open your eyes to the plight of a different type of people.