A book one perhaps shouldn’t enjoy as much as I did, but as an exploration of what happens when humans leave a landscape – whether one they’ve polluted or simply one they’ve abandoned – it’s actually quite reassuring even in the midst of it’s being shocking.

There is alost nowhere that’s so polluted that life of some kind can’t regain a hold, given enough time. That (as Flyn herself is at pains to point out) is not an excuse or a invitation to more spoliation, or to not prosecuting polluters; but it is a reminder that we avoid pollution and climate change for ourselves, not because the natural world will be irretrievably damaged if we don’t: the climate emergency is about saving ourselves, not about saving the planet.

4/5. Finished Saturday 1 April, 2023.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)