Harrow: A novel

"The fouling of the nest was all but complete." Harrow takes you on a Ritalin-overdosed tour through a future where nature, and mankind for the most part, has been nearly completely destroyed. Yet, because there is so much to learn, rabbit-holes of references, etymologies, mythologies, and citations, it is like observing this environmental hellscape from the rain-streaked window of a speeding bus. Full of loathsome, chatty, fellow passengers.

I get why lots of readers did not "like" this book. A lot of it is uncomfortable gospel. Seven-year-olds being sentenced to prison for environmental activism does not make for happy reading. Nor does the thought of terminally-ill retirees plotting environmental terrorism in a failed attempt to save what's left.

The blur of observations, ideas and images creates a sense of lost equilibrium, and exasperation. Dry those teardrops of irritation though, because as Joy Williams writes in the book, "Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears."