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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Climate Chaos: a 99-word flash and the novels of Maggie Gee

28/4/2014

10 Comments

 
PictureThe climate is constantly changing on the moors
Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry: how the British love to talk about the weather.  With climate change in the offing, we’ve even more to chew over: floods, drought, winters that drag on for ever or seem never to arrive.  How could a Britisher not be inspired by this week’s prompt from Charli Mills for her flash fiction challenge?  Climate change in fiction: bring it on!

I’ve already turned up the heat on Annecdotal, with my previous post on the novel, Instructions for a Heatwave.  I’d been going to save it for a sultry summer’s day – should we get one this year – but Charli’s prompt makes it equally topical as we come to the end of a showery April.  What I recall of the summer of 1976 is how unprepared we were for the heat here in Britain.  How we must’ve sweated in our heavy nylon clothes as we endeavoured to keep up our cold-climate routines.  Just as Gretta in Maggie Farrell’s novel continues to bake her own bread in inflated temperatures, I have a vivid memory of how, the heat already unbearable, my ironing just had to be done.

We seem equally unprepared for the floods that now beset our shores with alarming regularity.  I’m not sure exactly when I read The Flood by Maggie Gee – but given that it was published in 2004, it can’t be that long ago – but, since then, events that seemed exaggerated in the novel have been played out again and again on the evening news: stinking streets; stranded cattle; ordinary people going about their business by boat.  The privileged are determined to continue as normal in Maggie Gee’s apocalyptic London: the infrastructure may be crumbling, people may be homeless and the rain interminable, but President Bliss directs his energies into wooing celebrities at an evening “do”.

Maggie Gee is a novelist who does not shy away from the big issues of racism, class conflict, and global catastrophe, yet often exploring them with a comic touch.  In an earlier novel, The Ice People, perhaps more serious in tone, it’s the prolonged cold spell that threatens the complacency of a not-too-distant-future Britain.  In a clever reversal of contemporary anxieties over immigration, people are fleeing Europe to the warmer climes of Africa, where they are not exactly welcome.

These were the literary influences of which I was consciously aware when I came to tackle the 99-word challenge.  Maybe it’s practice, maybe it’s the topic, but I found this a little easier than the last one on memoir.

When they began rationing the water, George thought he’d be immune.  His daughters would bring plastic bottles of Mountain Spring the minute the floods receded and the roads were passable again.  Meanwhile, Matron harvested rainwater, which tasted foul, no matter how diligently it was filtered and boiled.

Wilting in the heat, battling cholera and dysentery, the old folks felt forgotten, until the Press paddled a rubber dinghy to Shady Glen.  Cameras clicked as George was pushed to the front.  How do you feel now, Mr Bush?  Don’t you wish you’d acted on global warming when you had the chance?

If you’re thinking of joining in, and I highly recommend that you do, check out Charli’s guidelines for yourself as I think I may have taken a slightly different approach in writing a story on the topic of climate change rather than a story in which the climate changes.  Subtle difference?

I look forward to your feedback.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
10 Comments
Lisa Reiter link
28/4/2014 08:19:07 am

Itching to know more ! A nice little twist on George W, I assume?!

Reply
Annecdotist
28/4/2014 10:09:32 am

Thanks, Lisa. Funny you should make that connection …
"This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental" as they say.

Reply
Safia link
29/4/2014 11:19:35 am

Love it! How on earth do you manage to get a little twist into 99 words of flash - you never cease to amaze me, Anne. :-)

Reply
Charli Mills link
29/4/2014 04:52:52 pm

Oh, yeah, take that Mr. Bush! You got slammed in 99 words! Great flash writing, Anne. I think you are embracing the word constraint well and I love your twist on the prompt. Thank you for connecting your terrific blog to the Carrot Ranch challenge!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
29/4/2014 08:43:37 pm

Hi Anne, I really enjoyed your post. Disenchantment with the weather, whatever it be, doesn't belong exclusively to the British. Your post reminded me of a poem I learned in school, "Said Hanrahan": http://goo.gl/pYkAya I love the way you have worked the story's change in climate around climate change and doubled its impact. I hope climate change doesn't really do that! (double in impact I mean) I had a quiet chuckle at the end. Well done!
PS I received notification of this post by email. Yay!

Reply
Annecdotist
30/4/2014 03:22:30 am

Thank you all for your generous support – and Charli your inspiring prompt. Norah, I loved that pome, thanks for the link, really made me smile. Look forward to hearing you recite it from memory on your blog!!!

Reply
dan bloom link
30/4/2014 05:32:34 am

there is a new term for this genre and Charli knows now too - CLI FI for climate fiction via sci fi model but stories novels movies about climate. TiME magazine to do big story in upcoming issue in June. how do i know. I coined the term. am not novelist, am climate activist and literary provocateur with feelings that literature can impact our leaders decisions about climate action. cli fi here to stay. the genre is wide open. more info at cli fi central blog at http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

Reply
Annecdotist
30/4/2014 05:42:12 am

Thanks for sharing, Dan. What a wonderful resource You have on your website. I knew this was just the tip of the iceberg when writing about Maggie Gee's novels, but never imagined it was a whole genre. I love the idea of activism through literature – some novels have changed the world, or so I'm told.

Reply
Quiet Writer
30/4/2014 05:43:27 am

Nice one! I wonder when the politicians will actually listen.
Instructions and The Flood have now both been added to my reading list, which gets longer all the time. Just read and can recommend The Proof of Love by Catherine Hall, which is also set in the 1976 heat wave.x

Reply
Annecdotist
1/5/2014 05:37:10 am

Welcome to my blog, Rebecca(?), and thanks for your recommendation. Would be interested to hear what you think of Heatwave and The Flood if/when you get round to reading them.

Reply



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