Cop26 brings the environment into tight focus, making me
think of novels I’ve read that have highlighted the fragile links between humans
and the natural world.
The first novelist to spring to my mind is Barbara Kingsolver.
Her Flight Behavior is an engaging tale of migratory butterflies displaced from
Mexico. That might not sound like the best plot but under Kingsolver’s
ecologist hands the story blends mankind’s awe at the spectacle of millions of
butterflies turning up in rural Tennessee with the mix of difficult marriage,
adultery and pursuing a lofty cause.
Overstory by Richard Powers tells of trees and the people who
owe an aspect of their life to trees and vow to protect them. Reading this
novel was the first time I came across the concept of trees communicating with
each other through their roots. It felt like such an outlandish notion,
fictional even, but the idea has grown credence with evidence that trees warn
each other of danger and nourish weaker plants by channelling nutrients their way.
I haven’t read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck for
decades. However, the novel brought a distant land and time to my own Scottish
door as I followed the Joad family from dustbowl Oklahoma, a land drained of nutrients
by over farming. Steinbeck shows us what happens when we can no longer support
ourselves from the land.
Interestingly, all these novels are set in the United
States, and I struggle to think of any British with such a strong environmental
message. Can you help? I’d love to read your suggestions.