Stillicide

Starred review from September 14, 2020
Welsh writer Jones’s haunting and lucidly written latest (after The Long Dry) is set in a bleak future where water is so precious that a Yorkshire city has fashioned an “ice dock” to trap an iceberg it has dragged down from the Arctic. The archaic word stillicide, an apt title for the book, is defined as both a constant dripping and a law designating the dispersal of water from the wealthy to the “servient.” This latter meaning mirrors the novel’s plot, with cities controlling meager water supply and rural areas struggling to survive as they lose residents. The story receives unique resonance from its multiple perspectives, among them a conflicted soldier named John Branner, who works tirelessly to protect the ice dock from activists bent on sabotage; retired engineer David, who left the chaos of the city with his family to observe the devastation; and a character called “the professor,” who studies the protests and the ice dock, as well as native fauna (a thriving dragonfly, which could affect government plans, surprises and excites him). Terse, often poetic sentences surrounded by white space develop a rhythm, suggesting both an inevitability and a resignation. Jones’s visionary tale is a singular, brilliantly crafted addition to the climate fiction genre. Agent: Euan Thorneycroft, A.M. Heath Literary.

September 15, 2020
A grim vision of near-future Britain as climate change increases its grip. Welsh novelist Jones' latest isn't so much an apocalyptic novel as an apocalypse-in-progress one: Britain isn't yet in tatters due to global warming, but it's rapidly getting there. In desperation, an iceberg is being hauled from the Arctic to bring fresh water, bolstering what's already being distributed via a "Water Train" that can carry 10 million gallons at 200 miles an hour. The precious cargo is well protected against monkey-wrenchers: There are weapons onboard, and guards are stationed along the tracks. But anxiety is high, symbolized by one of those guards in the early pages investigating an anomaly while stressing over his dying wife and the general sense of impending calamity. Jones shifts this brisk story across a variety of perspectives: a journalist skeptical about the iceberg scheme; protesters at risk of displacement from the construction of the Ice Dock; the journalist's wife, a nurse pondering an affair; a scientist who discovers a protected dragonfly, which threatens to halt the Ice Dock plan; a boy chasing his dog into a guarded area; a father distressed at his son's work for the Water Train, which is under seemingly constant threat from saboteurs. In prior novels, Jones has proven masterful at spare, aphoristic sentences that create a sense of foreboding, whether his subject was drug trafficking or hard-luck rural hunters. There are glimpses of that here. But though Jones' long-running concern with nature makes climate change a natural theme for him, this novel lacks the earthy grit of his earlier work and the kind of clarity a thriller demands, even an ersatz one. Jones finely captures the mood of a country nearing collapse, but his plot threads are loosely woven.

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September 1, 2020

From his 2006 debut novel, The Long Dry, to his recent Cove, Welsh writer Jones has consistently offered unconventional fiction that attracts award attention. He continues to challenge readers in his new work, in which a climate crisis has pushed a near-future Britain into extreme weather, with floods, drought, and rising temperatures. The economic agenda is dominated by ways to obtain a water supply for a growing population. Previous attempts--an underground pipeline and a heavily armored water train--have been attacked by vigilantes, protesters, and terrorists. The latest plan is to tow icebergs from the Arctic to an ice dock where the melt off, i.e., stillicide, which will provide pure drinking water and agricultural irrigation. With the population being given only corporate platitudes, journalist Colin digs for answers about this venture. Then a scientist discovers the small skeletons of dragonflies in the bulldozed earth near the ice-dock construction, and if larvae exist as well, work on the dock could come to a halt. Meanwhile, John Banner, a soldier patrolling the water train route, must decide if an intruder alert on his computer is business as usual, but tragically this time it is not. VERDICT Jones's compressed, minimalist style heightens the effect of a precarious future for a world where climate chaos is deadly serious, creating an absorbing narrative for sophisticated readers.--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

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October 15, 2020
The title refers to an ancient law about the collecting of water dripping off a building, thus setting the ethos for Welsh writer Jones' (Cove, 2018) latest novel. The setting, a near future in shoreline communities near a city, is intimated through short testimonials of those living through or just surviving a crisis that necessitates the commodification of water, Earth's most necessary resource. A soldier on patrol in the city witnesses protests and squalor through the scope of his rifle. A ship's captain maintains a stern normalcy as his crew harpoons an iceberg claimed for future riches and a city's survival. A nurse writes to her distant beloved as she copes with an unknown health crisis. Jones' signature, sparse style lends itself well to this apocalyptic slice of life. There are no elaborate plots or extravagant technologies. Rather, nature weaves in and out of these stories in the form of hovering bees, seaweed, and a dampness treasured and elusive. There are more than a few passages here could be taking place today. Stillicide will linger in its poignancy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)