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morebedsidebooks · 3 years
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Fauna by Christiane Vadnais
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From the cabin, Lawrence watches them shovelling ashes into the river, then savagely beating the air with the shovel to chase the clouds of grey dust. From time to time, tears roll down their cheeks. He had hoped to ease their suffering, at least a little. But the sight of their rage as they incinerate their dead makes him wonder whether it was all for naught. Why help a few human beings among the glut of corpses that is on its way? Why try to appease the unappeasable? Maybe, before this last gasp of a dying civilization, there is simply nothing to be done. Exhaustion gnaws at him, the desire to give it all up steals over him.
Then he watches them topple over, and get up again, and keep on working. They have such need of tenderness.
So he gets back to washing their clothes, changing their sheets, preparing medications and meals. He sweeps up the feathers they have shed and brushes their dry skin, thin hair, and iridescent scales. Their stores of food are running very low. But only four remain. One refuses to eat. In a few days all will have succumbed to the epidemic. Then he’ll leave Shivering Heights for the beleaguered metropolis. If the circumstances haven’t changed, and if he takes sufficient precautions, perhaps he’ll manage to bring a new cohort of the dying here, to help them live out their final days in a blanket of human warmth, far from the bedlam of the cities. Sometimes, before they squeeze out their last breaths, the men and women afflicted by the catastrophe shake his hand with a surprising vigour. He wants to believe there is solace in this hand of his. When one of them comes to him, ready to set out on their final journey, he tries to channel all his powers of comfort into his palm, before the current running through him disappears, before the energy he conducts dissipates, before the electric concentration of life gives way to a feeble death rattle.
In the first work of fiction by Quebecois author Christiane Vadnais, Fauna delivers thought-provoking expressions of 10 interconnected eco-fiction vignettes with a real strain of horror. Part of the fright is a story like Fauna is speculative yet holds real life hallmarks of dystopia and apocalypse. Such a work can show how humans are also animals (brutal, carnal, consuming, but persistent animals) and not above the natural world or immune to the abuses of it like many people behave or seem to think. Life has its ways and nature wins, obviously. Originally written in 2018 in French, translated to English by Pablo Strauss, with cli-fi themes this title should be within the bounds of literature I normally love. However, recommending the short book is complicated because of the chapter that starts things off ‘Diluvium’. Not only does this vignette set at a hot spring spa with an exhausted female executive have some content that is a hard way to begin, there is no expansion of it within. Only additional appearance further on of the other guest braving the torrential downpour. So, events come off like tawdry shock as a result and sully the otherwise smart book. I am not very forgiving of making use of trauma in this way in any narrative. Obviously, those who gave this book multiple awards see (or overlook) something I do not.
  Fauna by Christiane Vadnais is available in English translated by Pablo Strauss, in print and digital (including audio) from Coach House Books
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