The Great Transition (2023) by Nick Fuller Googins is a completely engaging, hopeful climate fiction novel told from the perspective of Emi, a 15-year old living in Nuuk, a city in Greenland, and her father, Larch. Larch, and Emi’s mother, Kristina, were part of the Carbon Capture Corps and Great Transition, where young people were put to work to reverse the climate crisis, fighting forest fires, building seawalls, and deconstructing places that had been abandoned because of the increasingly chaotic and dangerous weather events.
The novel starts at some point in the future from Emi’s and Larch’s perspective, but flashes back to Larch’s perspective from the time of the Great Transition. Chapters are also separated with school assignments Emi writes after interviewing her mother. In the future, they celebrate “Day Zero,” which is when the earth reached net zero carbon emissions.
Kristina has left Larch and Emi to do her “extraction duty” which is similar to current National Guard 2-week assignments, and Larch decides to take Emi to her first Day Zero public celebrations, despite Kristina having warned him to stay home. There is chaos after an attack on a public figure, and a crowd stampede. They have to jump off of the seawall to escape, and when they get back to their apartment, Public Safety starts asking questions.
So Larch and Emi decide to go find Kristina at the base, near New York City, where she has been working. They don’t know who they can trust, and Emi has never left Nuuk. Though Larch was well-known during the Great Transition, due to his being featured in a reality stream called “Corps Power,” he has been a chef for Nuuk’s basketball team in the years since.
The future has streaming, on “screens” and Greta Thunberg is called “Mama Greta”. What happened on Day Zero was a coordinated attack on fourteen climate criminals by a group called The Furies, who may or may not be associated with Phoenix Company of the Corps, which is Kristina’s original company. Was she involved? And why is Emi now missing? Where could she go in the middle of a military-esque base?
I really enjoyed it! And it was completely weight-neutral. Although Emi does struggle with eating and hunger, it’s never associated with body size. Emi’s struggles seem to be with more with anxiety and her need to control something in her environment.
Reading While Fat 