But by refusing to hope for the impossible, Franzen, improbably, manages to produce a volume that feels, if not hopeful, then at least not hopeless. There’s nothing he can do – there’s probably nothing any of us can do – to avert or even alleviate the coming catastrophe. It’s an accusation to which Franzen is acutely sensitive, not least because it has been levelled at him before. In 2014, the Society had, “with much fanfare”, thrown all its resources into the climate change fight, declaring that global warming was “the number-one threat to the birds of North America”. “Even in a world of dying,” Franzen concludes, “new loves continue to be born.”• The End of the End of the Earth by Jonathan Franzen (4th Estate, £16.99).

Source: The Guardian November 09, 2018 09:00 UTC