When There Are Wolves Again

This is the story of two British women over the next forty years or so, taking in climate change, eco-activism, rewilding and pandemics. It takes the form of pair of separate narratives that brush up against each other and overlap here and there as each chapter hops us forward a few years. Swift does a great job of keeping us up to date with these women’s personal lives and relationships over the decades while also sketching the political and social changes happening. She never flinches from the scale of the catastrophe facing us, but crucially offers hope and solutions instead of wallowing in doom. It’s tempting to read this as a smaller scale, more intimate, version of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry For The Future, but that isn’t necessary - it’s a more than good enough book to stand on its own. Plus it has some excellent dogs* in it. I really liked this one.