‘After The Green Withered’ by Kristin Ward

The Importance of EcoLiterature

Today’s post is an incredibly exciting one as I am reviewing a book part of a massive book tour organised by Twitter’sThe_WriteReads, a forum where book bloggers can support other bloggers through retweeting and commenting. Not only is this a great way to increase one’s exposure in the blogging world, TheWriteReads has created a community in which bloggers can exchange opinions and ideas freely and get recognition for the hard work they put in. And now, they can even take part in this #UltimateBlogTour and get to experience reading some amazing books they perhaps would not have found without this community! If you are interested, check out the other nine bloggers also featured in this blog tour!

Now, enough babble, let’s get onto the book in question: After The Green Withered by Kristin Ward (find her on Twitter here). Winner of the Best Indie Book Award, Ward writes a haunting look at a possible reality that has taken advantage of the world’s environment and is now reaping the consequences. From the onset I was hooked. The opening chapter features a realistic (and quite scientific) description of the world’s decent into one of water deprivation that leaves whole countries in a state of chaos and ruin.

The Story

The novel follows Enora Bynes, a young teenager and part of a generation that has inherited a barren wasteland. Money has been replaced by water as the currency, and the world Enora finds herself in is rigidly controlled by those with the power to distribute water. But she soon discovers there secrets to be unearthed and not all is as it seems.

Ward’s focus on water brought a humanitarian element into consideration which I greatly appreciated. According to the World Health Organisation an estimated 35% of the world’s population do not have access to clean water. Often, those of us who live in countries privileged enough to have the luxury of a constant source of clean water from your taps, we forget just how essential water is to our bodies and our lives. Not just for drinking purposes but cleaning, personal hygiene and food safety.

The environmental focus in the novel, particularly in the form of water is not new, but is utterly terrifying. The descriptions of water deprivation in After The Green Withered were so detailed that I often found myself reaching past my coffee in favour of my water bottle (shocking, I know!). But it was a sign that this constant thirst that so many of the characters endure is not such a far-fetched reality. And it was exactly this that I admired the most about this novel: the realism.

It is so easy to see the potential for such a reality to exist in the future if the climate does not become more of a priority to our world leaders and to us. And it is this potential for the landscape Ward has painted that makes the novel so poignant. Moreover, the effect that such a barren life has upon people, their thoughts and their humanity is majorly dealt with in the novel. While there is little dialogue, there are constant insights into the mind of the protagonist that demonstrate just how all-encompassing a life of lack is.  

The importance and relevance of writing about the environment.

Where the risks of technology and tyrannical governments featured heavily in the minds of science-fiction and fantasy writers in the past, the environment as a theme has clearly found its way to the forefront of authors’ concerns. And rightly so! It seems that not a day can go by without being made aware of yet another tragic disaster brought about by sheer ignorance and/or apathy regarding the climate. The rise of eco-literature that began in the 1970s is a testament to the growing concern. Many books that I have read in this theme really unpack how human consciousness and humanity suffer after crossing the line between excess and deprivation.

Literature is often used to encourage individual action that would be considered morally right, but sometimes lacks the incentive for wider civic engagement around those same issues. EcoLiterature can at times be lacking in it’s analysis of the wider implications of climate issues, including class disparities and animal rights for example. I believe part of the reason for this is because of how few books and novels on the environment make it to the front of the bookstore.

Ward’s story, though set in a future that moves past some of those social issues we see today, nevertheless tackled the wider context of discrepancies in access to resources such as water. Seeing the attention After the Green Withered is getting because of the blog tour and that it won an award leaves me with more hope that environmental concerns will find their way into mainstream book worlds soon. Dystopian novels tend to demonstrate that it is the people that have changed the most, rather than the landscape or way of living. It is this factor that makes novels like After The Withered Green worth reading as it functions as a warning, a wake-up call, and a desperately needed one at that.     

~S~