Self-righteousness reigns supreme when it comes to discussions of the climate crisis, and I applaud Kiesling for aiming to show how we are all complicit in the state of the world - unfortunately, her protagonist is such a cliched older millennial that it takes away from the potential to honestly ponder accountability. Bunny is the daughter of a diplomat roaming the world and later working in big oil, she is self-absorbed and renders readers angry, despite (or because of?) the author's narrative talent. Subtle this is not, but it is rather long.

Note: I was given access to read this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Mobility was not the book I expected. While it mentions the politics of the times, it is much more concerned with the morality of rationalization. The main character is believable and layered. I think this book was missing a special spark though.

Just absolutely brilliant. Every bit of revulsion you feel for the vapid main character is so strategically done. Clever and trailblazing and unlike anything I have ever read. So awesome.

In this voluminous narrative spanning 350 pages, we delve into the life of an individual—a notably basic, weight-obsessed, and privileged white woman. Her existence unfolds through the tapestry of awkward small talk seamlessly woven into the fabric of business functions and social events. As the protagonist maneuvers through the intricate dance of corporate and social landscapes, she engages in a ritualistic self-care routine that extends to the realms of progressively more expensive and elaborate makeup and skincare.

The narrative unfurls scenes of her meticulously piecing together cute and, inevitably, progressively more expensive outfits tailored for the diverse occasions of work, parties, and travel. Amidst this carefully constructed facade, a contrasting reality looms large—an Earth witnessing the unraveling of its ecosystems and the gradual disintegration of human rights.

This juxtaposition serves as a poignant commentary on the paradoxical nature of her existence, where personal indulgence and corporate pursuits take precedence, seemingly detached from the profound issues plaguing the world.

The narrative skillfully navigates the complexities of privilege, environmental concerns, and corporate indifference, painting a vivid portrait of a character whose life unfolds against a backdrop of societal and ecological upheaval.

I enjoyed this book and thank Netgalley and the publisher for the audio ARC in exchange for my review.

I enjoyed this book that had themes of climate change and the oil industry. The narration was well-done.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a novel about Elizabeth (also called Bunny), the child of a Foreign Service parent who lived in many different countries as a kid; though most of this story takes place in Texas with Elizabeth as a young adult. There were some really interesting takes about oil, renewal energy, and climate change that I found really interesting. The narrator was wonderful!

This was an anticipated listen for me but a few parts ended up not working for me and I can't quite put a finger on why. I still thought the audio was very well done.

This was a very interesting premise. Using one women’s lens to view oil, the environment, culture and geopolitical events was compelling. I really enjoyed everything about this, except the last chapter. I would’ve been happy it if had ended with her speaking at the conference instead of spelling out a disastrous climate change future.

If you like books about politics, wealthy WASPs, and shallow characters, this book is for you. Bunny is coming-of-age in a time where a lot is going on between the U.S. and Middle East. Her family has ties to the oil industry and she grows up to work within the same spheres. Her character was so unlikeable to me and she was too focused on her appearance and what others were doing. She felt vacant and desperate. I can see the appeal of this book to some, but it just wasn't for me.

Thank you Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the ALC!

Mobility - Lydia Kiesling (audiobook narrated by Kelli Tager)

Audiobook review time! Thanks to @netgalley, @dreamscape_media and @crookedmedia for the chance to listen to this one!

Elizabeth "Bunny" Glenn, daughter of a foreign service journeyman, finds herself in Baku, a teenager with little to do except watch soap operas and fantasise about the men around her. These men are flocking to the collapse of the Soviet Union: oil men, journalists, prospectors looking to get in and make their name or their fortune.

From this launchpoint we get both a coming-of-age tale and an exploration of geopolitics, not least the energy sector. Bunny is a truly fascinating character to follow. When I first finished the book, I found her deeply unsympathetic, someone who is obsessed with her looks and just casually bumbling through, privileged enough to get opportunities. Her path from naïve teen to ignorant adult, an executive in an energy company, is infuriating, yet somehow very human. It's difficult to explain how she gains sympathy, but she does, even if she can't take personal responsibility for her questionable decisions and actions.

A few things bothered me, mostly the portrayal of left-wingers as generally unlikeable doomsayers who don't have fun. In a book with the gut-punch ending this has, it felt out of place and overly political, but then it is published by Crooked Media, so you should know what to expect if you aware of their work.

As an audiobook, especially set in a country I was travelling in, I found it engaging, almost riveting, but I honestly can't decide my feelings on its message. So, I need more people to read it so I can talk about it. That's my selling point to you! And this quote, given by an oil executive, is horrifying, portrayed as such in the book:

"We don’t think in economic cycles, we don’t think in election cycles … in this industry, we think in earth time. Geologic time. There’s no short-term problem we can’t wait out"

Fascinating and infuriating in equal measure. Someone read it so I can talk about it!!

edit 10/9/2023: I am updating my rating from 1 to 2 stars due to a buddy read discussion here on GR as well as an interview with author, which highlighted two things. First, this is as much about gender as it is about climate. Second, some of the choices the author made are deliberate and, though I disagree with them, they do explain why the novel takes the position it does.

original review: 1/9/2023: I think this is my first 1 star rating ever... The premise of this novel about a young woman working for an oil company sounded very appealing to me. I did not want a moralistic tale, but was looking forward to a thoughtful discussion about where personal responsibility ends, against a geopolitical background of fossil fuel dependency.

Unfortunately I learned absolutely nothing new from it.

In the opening chapters we are in Baku, where the father of main character Bunny works for the American embassy to Azerbaijan. Bunny is a very impressionable young woman and doesn’t have an opinion about anything except clothes, calories and men. I had sympathy for 15-year old Bunny, but as the book progressed and Bunny gets older, it becomes clear she does not develop, stays characterless, does not take an interest in anything else but outward appearance and continues to simply agree with the last person she spoke to.

What is worse, the author has nothing interesting to say except for a few banalities about how men treat women in a male dominated industry. I don’t know if it was laziness, or a lack of research or simply having nothing interesting to say.

If you are looking for a climate novel with a bit of content, please skip this and read the recent About People by Juli Zeh - it is so much more fulfilling.

The audio version is really well done and the novel lends itself well for listening.

I appreciated this book, a look at climate change and the oil industry. I liked the child of immigrants storyline as well.

3.5⭐️

<i> The year is 1998, the End of History. The Soviet Union is dissolved, the Cold War is over, and Bunny Glenn is an American teenager in Azerbaijan with her Foreign Service family. Through Bunny’s eyes we watch global interests flock to the former Soviet Union during the rush for Caspian oil and pipeline access, hear rumbles of the expansion of the American security state and the buildup to the War on Terror. We follow Bunny from adolescence to middle age—from Azerbaijan to America—as the entwined idols of capitalism and ambition lead her to a career in the oil industry, and eventually back to the scene of her youth, where familiar figures reappear in an era of political and climate breakdown.

Both geopolitical exploration and domestic coming-of-age novel, Mobility is a propulsive and challenging story about class, power, politics, and desire told through the life of one woman—her social milieu, her romances, her unarticulated wants. Mobility deftly explores American forms of complicity and inertia, moving between the local and the global, the personal and the political, and using fiction’s power to illuminate the way a life is shaped by its context. </i>

This was an interesting conceit, it just lacked… something. Either there needed to be a sympathetic character to connect with, or it needed to be shorter. As it was, having to witness Bunny/Elizabeth’s continued vapidity as the world burned, through the entire story, was a lot. It definitely got the point across, and I agreed in large part with the messaging, it was just hard to sustain interest while traveling alongside such a self-centered, complicit character for the duration.

Kelli Tager did a good job narrating the audiobook.

Thank you Lydia Kiesling, Dreamscape Media, and NetGalley for providing this ALC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

This was really different from anything I've read previously and I LOVED it! It was a powerful coming of age story and Bunny quickly became one of my all time favorite characters. I think it would be impossible to not love Bunny. She seemed so real and relatable and the kind of person I would want to befriend. This audiobook was really interesting, eye opening and entertaining. The writing really resonated with my sense of humor.

2.5 stars
I really wanted to like this book. It had such an interesting premise to explore the main character, Elizabeth’s life from her teen years as a diplomat’s child in Azerbaijan in the late 90s to her continued involvement with the oil industry in her adult years. I was invested when the story included historical and cultural references but was equally put off with all the vacuous commentary in the teen years (like a way too descriptive waxing scene) that didn’t really get any more better in the adult years.
The narrator did a good job!
*Thanks to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the audiobook copy for the review.

I had been looking forward to reading this book after hearing much discussion through Crooked Media. I actually had a chance to listen to it when given an audio copy through Net Galley.
Overall I thought the book did a good job of weaving in geopolitical events while shown through the eyes of a teenager, then young adult, and eventually following Bunny into adulthood. Bunny being unlikeable didn't really detract from my interest in the story so I give credit to Kiesling because that does often happen to me as a reader.
The last chapter was a doozy and unfortunately very believable. Although it was drastic, I wish readers were able to spend more time with Bunny/Elizabeth in that future time.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. 3.5 stars rounded up.

For some reason I thought this book was nonfiction -- that's on me! Maybe because I knew was from Crooked Media Reads? Regardless, this book was great. It centers on how the personal is political

It's writing is great and I loved the various meanings from the title alone. I love the impact of words having double meaning and the title mobility is even beyond that.

Mobility follows the life of Elizabeth (who goes by Bunny in younger years) through basically her whole life. We're introduced to her as a young child when she's living abroad because her father is a diplomat and we follow her through the years.

Phew, this book was really really interesting. I listened to the audiobook and there were many moments where I had to pause between chapters to just think through what was going on. It was really fascinating to see the world through Elizabeth's eyes and privilege and watch as things changed. It was such an interesting picture of the oil industry through a personal lens. The book left me feeling heartbroken for the damage we're doing to the earth but also made me really reflect on how entrenched we are in the oil industry.

Overall I really really enjoyed this book. I loved the final chapter (I won't spoil it but I will just say... wow).

In Mobility we follow the story of Bunny Glenn, an American teenager in the late nineties, who is growing up in Azerbaijan with her Foreign Service family. We follow Bunny while she is trying to find her place in a world full of political and economical changes, power, wars ...on a global platform. Capitalism is all around and while her father would want his daughter to enter the Foreign Service, Bunny is more ambitious. Being determined and hard working she lands a job in the oil industry which opens doors to a world and life she only could have dreamed of.

I listened to Mobility via the audiobook Netgalley provided and was first attracted by the cover and title. When reading the synopsis I also became intrigued by Bunny. How she wanted to find her place in a world where her place still seemed to have been prepared for her. The expectations her family had, the image of women being expected to still want children and build a family. Bunny wanted to do things differently and I have truly enjoyed to follow her from a teenager till a middle aged woman.

NOTE this is a copy of my review for the PRINT edition, which I got AFTER trying to deal with the audiobook. I really wanted to read it, and I am glad I did, but the quality of the audio was wretched and I just couldn't deal with it. Tried it on several devices...all were bad. But I still loved the book

I have not read Lydia Kiesling’s book Golden State, so that wasn’t what prompted me to want to read Mobility. And it wasn’t a desire to learn about Azerbaijan (doubt I could find it on a map), or interest in the oil and gas industry. Nope, TBH it was learning that the publisher was Crooked Media Books (Zando). I’ve been a Crooked fan since the pre-Crooked days (the Keepin’ It 1600 podcast was my first real intro to Favs, Lovett, Tommy and Dan – now perhaps best known for the Pod Save America podcast. Thanks to Crooked Media Books and NetGalley, I received a copy of Mobility in exchange for this honest review.

This combo coming-of-age novel/geopolitical tale/female empowerment saga starts in 1998, featuring Bunny Glenn. Her father is in the Foreign Service in Azerbaijan at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Bunny is in a unique position to learn about another culture, and as she viewed the area’s attractions, she “longed to explore them with a friend.” She meets Charlie, introduced to her as the …”most hated American in the former Soviet Union.” Charlie tells Bunny “There’s basically never been a better opportunity for graft in the history of the wold than right here, right now.”

For a reader like me, lacking extensive (or even minimal) knowledge about the region and/or its history, it was helpful to have relevant info inserted seamlessly into the story: “Azerbaijan is a Shiite country, like Iran, but not like Iran,” and “Kazakhstan was the real prize at first, just ungodly amounts of oil underground.” Greed brings people and corporations flocking to the area, “during the rush for oil and pipeline access,” and we watch Bunny evolve from teen to middle age, through her career and an eventual return to the U.S., following along as she learns and grows into a fascinating woman. Throughout it all, the reader views the U.S. participating both overtly and behind the scenes with the twin forces of complicity/greed and inertia, as the region becomes more and more important both politically and economically.

My favorite books are ones that manage to be both entertaining and thought-provoking. That’s exactly what Mobility was for me. Thanks to Crooked and NetGalley, this is my honest FIVE star review!