PositiveFull StopIn her startling debut Fauna, a climate-fiction novella exquisitely translated from the French by Pablo Strauss, Vadnais brings climate change home to bourgeois suburban society and to the deepest interiors of the human body ... The ferocity of Fauna’s environment alone does important political work in our age of climate denialism ... Vadnais inspires a fear of nature that replaces our modern ecological arrogance with respect and humility. The matter-of-fact tone amplifies this effect by preventing the reader from construing the surreal events as unreal. By narrating natural destruction in a neutral tone, Fauna models one way that climate-fiction can serve environmentalism ... A purely dystopian reading ignores Vadnais’s palpable delight in the end of this world ... aesthetic admiration of nature, retributive rage at humanity, and collective suicidality intermingle and welcome the end of our world. While politically productive, the book’s portrait of humanity is often a caricature. The narrative is largely unable to incorporate warmth and softness into its characters, who are rarely sympathetic and always two-dimensional ... Whether or not readers share this vision of humanity, they can savor the book’s vivid imagination and elegant prose. Strauss’s phenomenal English translation makes Fauna one of the most beautifully written books in contemporary anglophone climate-fiction.
