The Means of Keeping is not the sort of climate fiction I’m used to seeing. Most of the cli-fi I’ve read focuses very intently on the climate, whether on its effects on people and human civilization or on the human attempts to bring the climate back to a pattern that suits our needs. Marcello’s book is focused on the people who have been impacted by a changing climate, but for the most part, that climate feels distant and far off, especially compared to the storms raging between David and Tereza.
(That’s a little too intense a term. While David and Tereza do have trials in their romantic life, those trials are hardly tempestuous. Even when one of them seeks out a different romantic partner, the anger from the other feels softened by the general air pervading the book.)
Most mentions of the changing climate feel distant and abstract from the realities of the two protagonists, aside from the microburst that led to a plane crash and the deaths of both their families. Part of this may be because the book is not really about climate change itself but about grief, and the climate change is in the book because the book is set a few decades into the future, where the climate will be more erratic than it is today. This is how I interpreted the book, but it isn’t an interpretation that entirely sits right with me.
For one thing, despite being set in the future, the technology feels very modern when it is mentioned at all. It is difficult to believe that innovation would have stalled so entirely, especially with the frequent technological leaps of the twentieth century. For another, the mostly abstract approach to climate change makes it hard to believe it is changing in the world of the book. Surely there would be smaller changes that build up to affect day-to-day life and not merely occasional microbursts.
As a meditation on grief, The Means of Keeping
