The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente

Garbagetown’s Fuckwit heritage even extends to the naming of its citizens after items of trash (a ceremony involving cake and a long wandering). It’s an objectively odd setting, but perfectly in keeping with the almost magic realist setting of the novel. Tetley herself resides in Candle Hole, a warren made of the ends and bits of countless scented candles. In the post-apocalyptic age, Garbagetown has become something of a civilization that thrives in the ruins, its geography determined and arranged by the mounds of leftover fragments of the past-places like Pill Hill, Hypodermic Cove, Clotheschester, Bookbury, Scrapmetal Abbey, and the (literal) power center of Electric City.

Tetley lives on a massive floating patch of garbage and detritus, left over from the wasteful age of “the Fuckwits”, those previous generations whose heedless consumption and selfishness doomed the planet. Valente’s redoubtable heroine is one Tetley Abednego, “the most hated girl in Garbagetown”. The book is an extension of Valente’s novelette “ The Future is Blue”, set in a future where most of the Earth’s landmasses have been swallowed by the ocean. One of the great gifts of this novel, in fact, is how Valente blends the two-the situation she presents is at once over-the-top in its unrealism and poignant in the opposing realism of its flawed but human characters. But at no time, even in the most emotional moments of the story, does Valente flag in describing the absurdities of life. In her new short novel, The Past is Red (Tordotcom, 2021, $20.99), Valente brings her customary brilliance to bear on the looming existential threat of climate change and its social and human costs.

Her work is profound, graceful, passionate, and suffused with puckish humor (this last has hit peak hilarity thus far with her 2018 novel Space Opera, by the way). Valente, and the reading world is all the better for it.

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente