I figured there’d be thousands of applicants for the Olympic lifeguard role, so I didn’t expect to hear back. But, a few weeks later, I was invited to a two-day exam at the London Aquatics Centre. It was the end of April – I remember because it was my birthday and I’d just turned 37.
It was intense. There were knockout stages and you only got one chance. The first thing they did was throw a mannequin to the bottom of the 5-metre-deep pool. The ones who couldn’t make it to the bottom were cut. Then there were other tasks and theory tests. When I passed, I felt disbelief. I remember sitting on the floor in the showers – it had just hit me that I could be lifeguarding the top athletes in the whole world.
Hum has a convincing quality of understatement: it is gripping, but its plot doesn’t abide by the spikes and crescendos that the dystopian setup led me to anticipate. There is no dramatic or bloody confrontation. The stakes rise and then somewhat recede. It’s a thoughtful and graceful novel, not very long, told in short chapters, with an offhand turn of phrase that immerses us in May’s threatening environment, and just occasionally permits a glimpse of the richer world she craves: clean air and water, the smell of cedar, or the “quartet of cardinals” her mother sees one day, “such a red”.
When Chris Hoy began to feel pain in his shoulder in 2023, he thought little of it. As an Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist accustomed to pushing himself at the gym and on his bike, twinges weren’t unusual. But, as the pain became constant, his physiotherapist referred him for a scan where a tumour was detected. Further scans and a second consultation revealed prostate cancer that had spread to his pelvis, hip, ribs and spine. Then came the final blow: it was incurable. The prognosis was between two and four years.
“The Serviceberry” is an impassioned call not just to return to the natural webs of exchange that are our birthright‚ but to recapture the fulfillment that stems from interdependence. “To replenish the possibility of mutual flourishing, for birds and berries and people,” she writes, “we need an economy that shares the gifts of the Earth, following the lead of our oldest teachers, the plants.” Whether we emulate their example is up to all of us.