(By Bec Kavanagh … ‘The Guardian’, Friday 21st March 2025)<\/p>\n
The Richell prize-winner\u2019s novel, set in a near-future lutruwita\/Tasmania, asks what does it mean to have hope in the face of climate crisis?<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen Susie Greenhill won the 2016 Richell prize<\/a> for emerging writers, her writing was described by one of the judges, Michaela McGuire<\/a>, as \u201celectric, and profoundly affecting\u201d. Her resulting novel\u2019s release into the landscape of 2025 only makes it more so.<\/p>\n This stunning, devastating debut starts slowly, easing us into the future where the novel takes place, a future marked by global heating and mass extinction. Tom, a scientist working to find and preserve the fading vestiges of plant and wildlife, brings home specimens and treasures to share with his daughter, Orla, and his wife, Elena, at their home in the foothills of Lutruwita\/Tasmania. Feathers, skeletons and fins, \u201ceggshells of the palest blue, a tiger snake\u2019s translucent, papery skin\u201d. But this poetic whimsy belies loss, as Tom is forced to reckon daily with the disappearance of the plants and animals he loves.<\/p>\n (Read the full article at ‘The Guardian’<\/a>)<\/p>\n (PS I’ve changed the capitalisation of ‘Lutruwita’, from a small ‘l’, above.<\/p>\n