Part of the problem is that the way we talk about climate action tends to emphasize nature and the nonhuman world. We think of organic produce as the “green” option and cotton tote bags as more “natural” than plastic alternatives—but when we really look at the numbers the benefits are much less clear. A hulking, high-tech nuclear power plant hardly conjures up images of bucolic hills, but nuclear energy is one of the safest and cleanest ways of producing electricity. Jumping on a crowded, dirty underground train might not bring you any closer to nature, but mass transit is one of the greenest ways to travel.
Maybe it’s time to drop the vibes-based approach to environmentalism for something a little more robust.
Burns frames the novel around a gruesome discovery in the attic of the Presbyterian church: Summoned to fix a leaky roof, the brothers find a decomposed body hidden under old choir robes. Every narrative needs a situation as well as a story (see Vivian Gornick on this matter), and Burns proves the point. Her whodunit and motive feel unimportant and, at times, unnecessarily confusing. But “Mercury” is a character-driven novel; the point isn’t the plot, but what the people enacting it reveal about themselves.
Read this as a comment on the essential human condition; perhaps even as an unlikely vehicle for escapism to a time when these cases were, at least, not a quotidian fact of public existence. Can we ever truly know what a writer has in mind? For this reader, what Cockayne has actually written is a history of that most devalued currency — privacy.
Though neither a scientist nor a professional musician, he engages thoughtfully with the world of sound in all its forms. The result is a remarkably absorbing and often charming work that may leave readers with the urge to tune in to the myriad sounds around them with renewed awareness.