Laura's Reviews > The Lost Cause

A hopeful novel about the coming climate catastrophe.

The story is told from the perspective of Brooks Palazzo, a 19 year old living in Burbank a generation or two from now. Since then and now, the seas rose, coastal cities largely fell, forests burned and glaciers melted.

But the plutocrats and accelerationists took to the seas and the New Green Deal finally passed. Things did get better.

Brooks's parents were heroes who accepted Canada's call for help to safe Calgary from the rising waters of its flood plain. He was orphaned when a plague hit. His grandfather, who feared the future his son was helping to build, took him in. There was love but no fondness.

Grandpa was a Maga. The Magas hated the Green New Deal; the right of everyone to a job; and the right of internal climate refugees to migrate to new cities. He believed we were in a lifeboat and couldn't take anymore people in.

Grandpa dies and Brooks inherits his house just as a refugee caravan comes to town. Brooks is one of the people who gets to help shape Burbank's response. Generous welcome or barred doors? Meanwhile, the Flotilla of plutocrats is arguing for rugged individualism, never mind that many will die. Strengthens the strain.

This book is joyful, didactic, heartbreaking, and hopeful. Awesome people take the time to educate Brooks about the real fights -- what we owe each other; how we get exploited and how we can stand together to stop it; what it takes to make a good legal argument or a good shelter -- and Brooks is earnest enough to listen.

It's not a perfect book. The speechifying is intrusive at times. Doctorow has a lot to say and while I love him saying it, there's time it took me out of the story. He also seems to be taking on Chekhov's Gun in a way that I'm not sure needed to be tackled. The female characters were astonishingly cool and smart in a way that makes me terribly skeptical they really would have gone for this kid.

But it was one of the best books I read this year. I love Cory Doctorow. How he can stare straight into the face of the forces making the world demonstrably worse and still be hopeful impresses the hell out of me.