ISLANDS OF ABANDONMENT
LIFE IN THE POST HUMAN LANDSCAPE
CAL FLYN
William Collins, 376pp, £16.99
Cal Flyn embarks on a ‘series of bold expeditions to examine the marks left on our land after humans have retreated’, explained Fiona Sturges in her review for the Guardian. The book describes ‘the isolated and often eerily dystopian fortress islands, irradiated exclusion zones, abandoned towns and shuttered industrial sites that have been recolonised by the natural world’. She goes to among other places Chernobyl, Estonia, Detroit, Montserrat and an uninhabited Scottish island – she herself is Scottish.
‘An ecological polemic must walk a tightrope,’ wrote Will Wiles in
Literary Review. ‘If it presents an overly confident picture of natural resilience, it will lull the reader into a false sense of security. If it is bleak about the condition of the planet and the prospects for humanity – even if that is where the facts point – it might fill the reader with despair. Islands of
Abandonment avoids these perils. It gives us grounds for hope, while not understating the huge task that awaits us in changing course away from catastrophe.’
Laura Hackett in the Times agreed: ‘Given its subject matter – when humans abandon a place, it is rarely for a good reason – this book could have been relentlessly negative. But Flyn’s lyricism, combined with her awe at the power of nature to survive in the worst of conditions, makes for a more edifying experience.’
‘There is some thrilling writing here, a fine way with the telling detail, and a plea for radical revisioning of what we mean by “nature” and “wild”,’ wrote Kathleen Jamie in the New Statesman.