Published by Knopf Doubleday/Vintage on March 8, 2022

Eleutheria is a near-future or alternative-present novel about a wannabe activist who joins a community that plans to counter rising environmental damage. The eco-crisis has coincided with (or been accelerated by) authoritarian rule across the US and Europe and with ethnocentric isolationism that caused Scandanavian countries to seal their borders and withdraw from the EU.

The story envisions a watershed political change based on a utopian society that, like other fictional utopias, is populated by a small and nondiverse group of like-minded individuals. Successful small-scale utopias tend to go off track when they try to replicate their success in a larger community of people who have sharply different political opinions. That reality is one that Eleutheria never satisfactorily confronts. Nor is it clear why pragmatic solutions to climate change (alternative energy sources, biofuel, and making shoes from plastic harvested from the ocean) need to be showcased on a Carribean island to gain widespread acceptance.

Willa Marks begins her idealistic journey of environmental activism by reading an unpublished manuscript that she’s not supposed to have. The author of Living the Solution, Roy Adams, advocates setting aside all personal pleasures and goals for the sake of absolute devotion to the cause of saving the environment. Inspired by Adams, Willa travels to Eleutheria, an island in the Bahamas, where Adams’ crewmembers have established an eco-friendly community called Camp Hope in the expectation of launching an eco-conscious project that will change the world. The details of the project are vague, as is Willa.

Since Willa was not invited to Eleutheria, she is not welcomed by Adams’ crew of ecowarriors until she gains Adams’ acceptance. That apparently happens after Willa suffers sunstroke while paddling around in the sea as she searches for Adams. Perhaps Adams decides to accept Willa because she is plucky. More likely, he accepts her because she worships him as a visionary. Nobody seems to notice that, as idealistic visionaries go, Adams seems a bit shady, although that will be obvious to the reader.

As Willa goes back and forth about her commitment to the cause, Adams adds new recruits in the form of rebellious teen offspring of wealthy parents. The story eventually takes an unexpected but welcome turn before reaching a bizarre and unbelievable climax.

Willa’s backstory portrays her as a young woman raised by drug addled survivalist parents in their self-inflicted cocoon of fear of outside world. Willa made terrariums that serve as a symbol for her youthful interest in protecting the environment, although they also seem to be symbolic of her need to protect herself. Willa later stayed with cousins who photographed her in designer clothes, hiding the price tags so they could return the clothing. That’s apparently symbolic of consumerism. Willa educated herself by sneaking into lectures at Harvard while hanging out with self-styled radicals called Freegans who regarded shoplifting as social activism. With little evidence, the Freegans adopted the belief that it only takes 3% of the world’s population to effect massive cultural change, a belief that Willa accepts as a verity before she begins her eco-adventure.

Willa began to hang out with Sylvia, a Harvard lecturer who became Willa’s first lover. How Sylvia came to possess the copy of Living the Solution that changed Willa’s life is a question that Willa does not ponder until late in the novel. While the truth is no doubt intended as a shocking reveal, it limps into the story as an anticlimax. A clash between Sylvia’s sophisticated political views and Willa’s naïve idealism fuels the novel’s relationship drama.

Eleutheria isn’t a long novel, but it feels padded. At one point, Allegra Hyde lists various things that can turn into projectiles in a storm. At another, she reproduces bits of climate change trivia that Adams’ crew members write down on pieces of construction paper. Occasional passages that describe the history and colonization of Eleutheria add nothing to the story. The plot too often bogs down when a good trimming of the word count would have produced a tighter, more evenly paced novel.

Hyde’s prose is often keen, but some of her images fail to make their intended impact. “Fear is a slimy sensation; it oozes into your limbs like a chilled eel.” How, exactly, does an eel get into your limbs? And what is the difference between a chilled and an unchilled eel, apart from the need to refrigerate eels that will eventually be used in sushi?

I had difficulty taking Eleutheria seriously, in part because it isn’t clear to me what point Hyde intended to make. Social activists can be silly and irrelevant and easily manipulated? True, but serious activists balance their idealism with a perceptive sense of the achievable. World governments show a trend toward redefining activism as leftist terrorism? Yeah, but the novel’s focus is not on the dystopian consequences of authoritarian rule. Self-styled visionaries often turn out to be frauds? Well duh. People are imperfect? Double duh, although that one seems to come as a revelation to Willa.

Hyde chose easy targets, from survivalists to gullible idealists, but exposing the obvious does too little to enlighten. Still, I appreciate Willa’s sentiment that “without a vision of a better world, it was despair all the way down.” John Lennon’s “Imagine” made that argument more simply and poignantly than Eleutheria.

The novel does make a couple of salient points, beyond the obvious truth that climate change, left unchecked, will eventually destroy most human life. One point is that the corporate elite won’t acknowledge the problem until the financial ruin caused by climate change exceeds the financial gain of running businesses that are based on carbon emissions. Another is that corporate media are great at reporting disasters — events that last a single news cycle — and not so great at reporting solutions that need to be explained and reexplained before they seep into the public consciousness. Despite its glimpses of thoughtful storytelling, the story is too muddled to serve as an effective cautionary tale and too detached to work as engaging fiction.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Eleutheria was a fantastic read that I wish was structured differently. I loved the main character, I thought Willa was relatable and naive enough that it was realistic with her upbringing. I also loved the exploration of the dynamic between her and Sylvia. Willa's desperate want for love and approval was her greatest flaw yet her most endearing character trait.

I really struggled to root for Willa and Sylvia, and I don't know if that was intentional. I didn't understand their relationship and whether we were supposed to root for them. I was struggling to decide whether or not the age difference was inappropriate or not? I think I completely missed how old Willa was supposed to be. But I didn't understand why the two of them were so drawn to each other, especially Sylvia.

The random chapters about the settlers were really hard to follow for me and I didn't understand their connection to the central theme.

Overall, I liked this read! I liked seeing Willa interact with her cousins and enjoyed the dynamic they had. I'm looking forward to seeing what Hyde writes in the future. And thank you so much to the publishers for sending me an early copy of this.

A story of agency and how we see the world we live in and how we think we should live in it. I don’t even know if I am in the right place to review this book because I am staring at the five pound body of my newest grandchild and hoping for a better world as I watch children bombed on the other side of the world. Yes, read this. Yes, think about this.

It was hard for me to get through this book. I just don't quite understand it. I think it's for a very specific type of person, but I can see a lot of other people enjoying it. The plot felt a bit slow, and while I adored the characters, I just didn't click with the storytelling.

This is a really interesting read. Set in the near future, the author portrays a world where the effects of climate change are increasingly impacting daily life and reshaping geographies, policies, and economies. The novel explores how one individual, committed to pursuing change, attempts to impact such a significant challenge. The main character, Willa, first falls into a relationship with a prominent professor, Sylvia, who she believes can help the world see the virtues in adapting new approaches to help combat climate change. When Willa believes Sylvia has betrayed her, she turns her attention and her commitment to Roy Adams, author of a manifesto for fighting climate change who is developing a community in the Bahamas that he claims will prove how society can adapt how it lives to be climate negative. In her relationships with both Sylvia and Ray, the reader sees the hope and disappointment that can come from placing your hope in a single, seemingly transformative figure.

This is a thought-provoking and a unique read. Highly recommended!

I truly wanted to love this but ultimately felt disappointed. Eleutheria is a novel of ideas—honorable, timely, important ideas—and I look forward to more books entering the market that deal with the ongoing climate crisis. But the characters felt so one dimensional to me, so it was hard to get invested in the plot. The characters were so flat that we need the plot device of Sylvia’s letter at the end to explain the two main characters’ personalities and motivations. And Willa felt passive—she has desires, sure, but things just sort of happen to her throughout the book. All in all, an ambitious novel with interesting parts (and nice writing), but probably not one I’d return to.

Thanks to Vintage and NetGalley for the ARC.

EVER JOIN A CULT BECAUSE YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND YOU’RE ALSO A MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL? This was a WEIRD book and I think it was probably not for me because I am ALSO worried about climate change and am a (reformed!) manic pixie dream girl. I don’t NOT recommend it but I don’t …. I didn’t like it. 3.25 stars. (Rounded down for NetGalley.)

This was a beautiful book, and it filled me with all kinds of emotions. I felt despair, I felt hope, I felt rage, and I felt like I was right at the edge of a brand new beautiful adventure.

This is a beautiful book, full of love, despair, and hope. It is about the past that created us and the past
that created the political/economic/climate change issues we live with currently. It is about the future, what could destroy us and what could save us.

i enjoyed this strangely compelling story about a naive young woman who joins an environmental activist group. I really appreciated the queer representation woven into the story.

Eleutheria was compelling to read but unusual at the same time. I am not sure that I like the speaking text not being surrounded by quotation marks. It made it confusing for me at times, as did the historical references to Colonization. It was difficult to always see the point of those chapters sandwiched between Willa’s past and the story of Camp Hope. However, I was driven to finish reading the story, quickly so as to discover the truth. Then tension built to make me, as the reader, desire to find out what happened to Willa. How did she end up in the place she did? What happened at Camp Hope? All of my background knowledge pushed towards a truly disheartening and distasteful end at the Camp. It was an expected ending in a way, yet had elements that made it distinct as well. And who is to say what the end results of climate change and denial on the part of the ruling class will be? Perhaps what Hyde suggests. Perhaps that would be the turning point of deniers. Let’s hope it does not get there. Overall, it was an interesting dystopian view of the world to come if we don’t change and one girl’s naive fight to change it.

simultaneously one of the most beautiful and horrifying books i've read in a while. allegra hyde, i bow down before you.

this novel follows willa, a girl in her early twenties in the not-so distant future who arrives on the island of elutheria in search of 'camp hope', a top-secret project that sees itself as the cure to the climate crisis, one that is worsening by the day. her arrival deems a delay to the camp's launch and reveal to the world, forcing willa to be the best crewmember the camp has seen. but is camp hope everything is appears to be? told in alternating chapters from camp hope and willa's childhood & time in boston leading up to her arrival at camp, the story is one of a world that is doing everything it can to keep going, while also digging itself further into the ground.

willa, while not the most likeable narrator, is quirky and honest, and doesn't let the opinions of others stop her from doing what she thinks is right. i really enjoyed the development of her relationship with sylvia, a sociology professor at harvard -- it was messy and wrong, which made it so so good. needless to say, the ending of this book is one of high stakes that makes the slow build of the narrative worth the wait.

i would recommend checking this one out if you're a lover of the planet, a lover of social movements, or a lover of strong literary prose.

This was one of the weirdest books I've read in a long time, and I loved it. While the book didn't have any actual elements of magic, it felt at the same time not quite real. The closest reading experience I have had to reading this book is reading Joyce. The focus on climate and activism was lovely, and I loved seeing all of the different perspectives coming together and the story stitching itself together through its timelines. This feels like the type of book you can read over and over and understand something new each time, and also is a great book for people who enjoy annotating their books. I received an e-ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for writing my honest review.

Eleutheria – the story of Willa Marks, a young woman finding her place in the world as it comes to a slow, seemingly-inevitable end – is simultaneously dreamlike and suspenseful, a gorgeous character study in a chillingly believable near-future.

Willa, who grew up more or less in an apocalypse bunker with her conspiracy-theorist, survivalist parents, is suddenly thrown into a world she was never prepared to live in when her parents both suddenly die, setting off a chain of events leading her to the secretive Camp Hope on the island of Eleutheria in the Bahamas, a budding organization devoted to fighting climate change. The story is told switching between three separate timelines: Willa in the "present" at Camp Hope, Willa in the past as she adjusts to life in Boston and embarks on a tumultuous relationship with a much older woman, and the history of the island.

First, the good, and there is plenty of it: the storytelling is ambitious, and largely succeeds (though I found the glimpses into Eleutheria's history a little less compelling, personally, and wish they had been fleshed out more fully). Willa was an extremely well-developed and fascinating character; her voice really pervades the whole story perfectly, and the first-person narration is immersive and a perfect choice. The writing throughout is lovely, and the atmosphere is simply impeccable: this book does suspense better than many horror novels I've read. Once I picked this up, I finished it within 48 hours, despite my busy grad-school schedule.

I had a few qualms as well; first and most importantly, I didn't feel quite convinced by the relationship between Willa and Sylvia; specifically, I wasn't quite convinced of Willa's feelings, which I thought should have been less opaque, given the first-person view. I also felt like the tensions of the relationship between Camp Hope and the Bahamian locals were not fully explored or developed, and that there was a lot of potential there that could have been played with (and some interesting issues could have been explored, which were touched on very briefly in the rest of the book but lingered in my own thoughts throughout).

Overall, this was an excellent read, and I will definitely be on the lookout for Hyde's future work. Recommended!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.

A fascinating literary adventure into one person's life as the world is crashing down around us.

Willa Marks is a true believer and has embarked on an odyssey to find the author of her beloved "Living the Solution," a guide to fighting climate change. She believe the only this author holds the answers to saving the plane and she is determined to locate him and his group of followers.

As she travels to the Bahamas and encounters mishap after mishap we are lead through her life and what has brought her to this very moment. Lyrical and delightful, join Willa as she overcomes obstacle after obstacle in her life leading to a twist you cannot predict! An impactful and thoughtful treatise on climate change and humanity. #Eleutheria #NetGalley

“Eleutheria” is the Greek word for Freedom or Liberty.

Allegra Hyde's stunning debut introduces us to Willa Marks. She is the single daughter of fully dysfunctional parents who are a volatile combination of survivalists and opioid addicts. A child comes out of such an upbringing either as a total mess, or with skills perfectly suited to a unique role in the world. Willa is firmly in the camp of the latter.

Willa’s parents were on to something. The near- future world of “Eleutheria” is a complete and total disaster. Climate change is wreaking havoc throughout: drought, famine and devastation in some parts, oversaturation and flooding in others. Stifling heat bakes some regions, massive hurricanes destroy more. Political systems have totally broken down; democracy is a thing of the past. Elections are delayed or, most often, outright canceled. Autocracy and martial law are the currencies of the day. There are some devolved “Occupy”-type resistors out there scrounging for food, clothing and shelter, while being clearly outnumbered by quasi-governmental militias armed to the teeth.

And there are others who follow the teachings embodied in “Living the Solution” who are dedicated to creating a sustainable utopia in Eleutheria to avoid the coming apocalyptic collapse. Is Willa Marks the final ingredient necessary to save the world? Allegra Hyde gives us an exciting, smart, grounded story that feels way too close for comfort.

Thanks to Vintage Books @ Random House and NetGalley for the eARC.

An ambitious, not entirely successful stab at the ecological crisis solution novel. Hyde’s debut is pacey, but it shifts gear often, between the worthy, the romantic and the surreal (those cousins who aren’t quite twins, and their escapades). Central character Willa is both brave and naive, active and passive, not entirely credible. The interleaved history-of-the Bahamas material is historically interesting but written in a kind of archaic, semi-lyrical prose that jolts.
A bit of a ragbag, then, this one, but its heart is in the right place.