91av

Juice
Tim Winton

The 91av Book Club has just finished our February read, the science fiction novel Juice, and for me, this was one of the best books we have read together.

Author Tim Winton took us on a journey to an Australia many generations from now, one devastated by global warming, where humanity is hanging on by its fingernails. Well, most of humanity. The scions of those responsible for climate change, the oil magnates and the energy barons, continue to thrive – and the question Winton asks is: should they be made to pay for what their ancestors did to the world?

Not another dystopia, some members cried when the book was announced – a fair criticism, as we haven’t been shy about delving into fairly dismal imagined futures in previous reads.

But wait: Juice isn’t a dystopia, Winton himself explained in a heartbreaking and furious essay he wrote especially for our book club. Describing it thusly would assume, he wrote, that there is something “outlandish” about his scenario. But with warming already breaching the 1.5°C limit, perhaps Juice is realistic, rather than dystopian – particularly if, like Winton, you live in north-west Australia, where temperatures recently reached 50°C (122°F).

“Sometimes I think we use the word dystopia as an opiate. It serves as a softener, an instrument of distance. And I don’t think we can afford it,” wrote Winton.

Winton was quizzed on this and many other things by our sci-fi reviewer Emily H. Wilson in a video interview. He talked about what it is like to live through extreme heat, how a lifetime of environmental activism and writing led him to finally write Juice, and how, as a former working-class boy, he treats writing “just like any other gig”.

He also talked about his views on culpability for climate change, his inspiration and his feelings about not yet finding a publisher in the US for this important novel on climate change and retribution.

There was also fierce discussion about Juice‘s merits or otherwise on our 91av Book Club Facebook page, where there were some major fans of Winton’s writing, and some who weren’t quite so grabbed by it.

“I found it absolutely compelling – dark in places for sure, while managing to maintain an air of positivity in the face of all tribulations,” wrote Victor Churchill. Charlotte Cee also approved, writing: “The … way the world, landscapes and climate, especially the heat, is depicted is so vivid. I think that it’s a book that I will return to again.”

Alan Perrett wasn’t quite so sure, feeling some irritation with the character of Winton’s garrulous protagonist, who is taken captive by a man with a bow shortly after the book opens. “I don’t want to put spoilers in, but I will say that if I was the bowman I would have shot the narrator within the first 100 pages or so – he’s that annoying and tedious,” wrote Perrett.

I’m with Churchill and Cee – Juice is a book that I think will stay with me forever, a genuinely important contribution to that genre known as climate fiction and, I think, to fiction overall. It has just been longlisted for the Climate Fiction Prize, and I can absolutely see it winning come May. What a book.

Art Cure
Daisy Fancourt

We’re moving away from science fiction in March to tackle Daisy Fancourt’s Art Cure. Subtitled “The science of how the arts transform our health”, this sees Fancourt, a University College London professor of psychobiology and epidemiology, reveal how making, and consuming, the arts can improve our health, make us happier and even give us longer lives. I really enjoyed the article she wrote for 91av in December about this, so I am thrilled to be diving in deeper – and to see that it has made the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.

Fancourt has written an exclusive essay for us about what catapulted her into a career researching the benefits of the arts to our health. We also have an extract from her book to tempt you to join us in reading it. These will be available at newscientist.com/bookclubextras from 27 February.

Later in March, we will be chatting with Daisy – join the club to share your questions. Happy reading!

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Alison Flood is head of books and culture at 91av, and runs the monthly 91av Book Club