I enjoyed this well written book which spans three generations of a family forced to move south as the climate changes. It's interesting given it's optimism - no wars, no famine and a benevolent government. The story is a love story. I'd recommend it.

Thrilling story, great plot and characters that keep you guessing right til the end. Great for fans of this genre. Really enjoyable.

This was a languid, wordy book that took me quite a while to get into. For the first third of it, I wasn't sure that it was the book for me, it was full of prose (bordering on the purple, in some cases) and I was wondering what it was all about.

And then, it hit its stride and I was glad that I persevered.

Yes, this book is about the effects of global warming on Australia (and as an Australian who has lived in many different parts of it, I could visualise the settings quite well), but that was just a tiny part of it. It was about Finch and April's relationships; with each other, with their family and also April's first husband. It was quite poignant in parts and I found myself getting emotionally involved.

If you want a straight, end-of-the-world kind of book, this isn't it. It is sobering to realise that the author's vision of Australia in the nearish future could well end up being true, unfortunately. It will be interesting to see what happens with it all.

I gave it 3 stars because it was a pretty good book, but not a great one, at least, not for me. I found it hard work to continue reading it, but I think it was because it was a different kind of book than what I thought it was.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster.

Average sea levels have risen around 23 centimetres since 1880 and that rate is accelerating, with another 3.2mm of rise each year in 2019. What if that rate continues to accelerate as the polar ice caps melt and the water heats up? Most of the eastern seaboard of Australia would be underwater, drowning Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

By 2221 most Australians might have moved to Hobart in southern Tasmania to escape the sea rise and ever-increasing temperatures.

This is the world Craig Ensor imagines in his new novel, The Warming.

The Warming is an intriguingly positive rendering of the future death of our planet. Told through the lens of a life-long love story, it shows that perhaps descending into war and mayhem amid environmental chaos is not necessarily our destiny.

This is a very different kind of climate fiction. It depicts a world where every country welcomes climate refugees and we've created artistic and academic enclaves towards the north and south poles. I have to say, though, I did wonder a little what our future descendants might have done with all the poor people and the football nuts when they formed these intellectual paradises.

In an isolated coastal town south of Sydney, young Finch Taylor is captivated by the mysterious beauty April Speare and her pianist husband William when they move into a nearby beach house with a piano and a tragic secret. Finch soon begins a lifelong love affair with music, and with April. But as he and April follow the great migration south to Tasmania, and eventually to a warming Antarctica, they must decide whether to bring children into a world without a future.

In 2221 the world is dying. Scientists have accepted it's only a matter of a few generations until the earth will be unfit for human life. Many people have stopped having children; others have children as a protest of hope. But mostly, they bide their time. There is nothing to be done except move further south. As Finch Taylor muses:

"By the time I arrived at the University of Tasmania, over two hundred years after the first scientific acknowledgement of the warming, the universities had accepted the fact that there would be no stay or reversal. There was no technological solution. The warming had a momentum which no amount of political change or technological advancement could stop. The solution was simple: to move. As we had done for thousands and thousands of years. Move from land to land. Southwards. Or northwards, for those on the other side of the equator. Two choices."

The technological advancements in The Warming also fascinating. Self-driving cars, of course, but also new ways to mark university students. For piano students, grades are based on the player's ability to emotionally impact the listeners. Technology measures the level and type of emotion felt by each individual listener.

The Warming is a story that starts small and slowly creeps outwards until you can see the whole picture stretching back through time. For many chapters it's simply the story of a 15-year-old boy with a major crush on a married 22-year-old woman, who also happens to be the only female for miles around.

It moves beyond this as both Finch and April age and grow towards each other. But in essence, The Warming remains throughout a love story at the end of the world.

So let’s take it from the start. It’s the 24th century, and things aren’t, for the Earth, going well.

Because global warming has, of course, managed to eliminate a whole lot of the planet’s population. (What’s a few billion between friends?) Between increasing heat and rising sea levels, a whole load of the planet is now uninhabitable, and what’s left of humanity keeps a brave face on while moving towards the poles, in the hope that the areas of declining iciness might provide a place to live, at least for a time.

That’s the setting of Craig Ensor’s debut novel, and it’s a pretty timely one, if you’ve paid any attention to the climate catastrophe on our doorstep. And as far as cli-fi goes, this is a pretty great first salvo. And while the overwhelming fuckery of a dying earth is the stage for the story, the meat of the work is the relationship of a young boy, Finch, and a married woman, April Speare. Yes, we’re aware that the seas and mercury both are creeping up, and that that is horrifying, but the twists and turns of interpersonal relationships are always foregrounded.

After all: don’t you think about your family more than you think about the ice caps? Even though you know that Big Issues are critical, it’s almost impossible to internalise such things. Sure, we all know that we’re going to die. But how many of us internalise that, or make peace with it until it’s almost upon us? Likewise, the characters in The Warming focus on their relationships, on their failings, even in the face of a world where enormous escape-pods are constructed for the wealthy to make a nautical escape upon.

The relationships in the novel, particularly that of parents and their children, are finely drawn. The author has a great eye for emotion, and the manifold confusions of interpersonal communication. The way words fall short and emotions overplay themselves is conveyed adroitly, and a lot of the text reads like uncorked memory. There’s a slipperiness to some of the chapters which puts me in mind of Carey’s writing: at once factual but full-throated in its emotional heft.

Music – composition particularly – is key (ha) to the novel, and so it’s unsurprising that the book’s arranged in movements. (The duel meaning obviously is important, given the couple of changes of locale which feature as time passes and heat increases.) The idea of repetition, of thematic variation is important, too; the novel revisits ideas and thoughts again and again, replaying disappointments and joys in other emotional keys to provide some alternate meaning.

This sense of harking back to things is important, as Ensor’s writing does not unspool neatly in chronological order. Rather, the narrative’s short chapters have the feeling of recounted memories, and contain all the pitfalls and unreliability of own own reminiscences. Parts of the story only become clear later on, and there’s a continual revision, continual refinement of the reader’s understanding of the story. I found plenty of little AHA! moments throughout, and it kept pulling me through the major characters’ lives.

While it’s set in the future, none of the novel is particularly outlandish in terms of tech. Everything seems pretty much in line with what you’d imagine may occur, and there’s no huge paradigm shifts. Avoiding a technological MacGuffin, Ensor manages to make the future appear as the present with a better phone system and shittier climate. It’s subtle, and it underscores how quickly today may become tomorrow.

Where the novel excels in proper SF-style terms is in its description of the ravages climate change levels on the earth. There’s a portion of the book describing a trip to a ruined Sydney, and it is a properly Ballardian excursion. Similarly, the futuristic Hobart skyline – yes, really! – is finely drawn. The speculative part of the fiction is so firmly grounded in fact that it’s almost impossible to view it as speculation. It seems that it’s something that will come to pass. Which, let’s face it, is an enormous bummer, though not one that stopped my reading.

It’d be great to believe that The Warming will be an alternate version of our planet’s future. It’d be wonderful if it proves to be quaintly outdated in the years Ensor writes about. Too much of it, though, rings true.

If, as I suspect, we’re all stuck heading southwards in heat-shielded cars, I hope readers of the future are able to take some solace in the portrait of dreams, love and the downfall of hopes portrayed here.

Ensor’s created an enjoyable bummer with The Warming. Whack it on your shelf next to On the Beach; the pair would make a good tandem read.

The Warming tells a very personal narrative of global warming, and made me contemplate how rising temperatures and sea levels could affect my life, relationships, and family. The setting also adds a sense of realism to those from east coast of Australia, I was able to picture the places I know well and the effects global warming may have on those regions.
At times, some of the language is overly descriptive, however the story keeps you engaged enough for it to not be too distracting.