A monthly book review by The Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough.
When I started this book, I was excited about what I thought would be a perceptive sociological analysis of how communities form in extreme climates. Given that the author, Elizabeth Rush, is a professor at Brown, I expected it to be academic, pointed and with a clear argument to be made.
What I received, in the form of Rush’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated prose, was nothing of the sort and all the more worthwhile for it. At the onset of “The Quickening,” Rush, along with a team of scientists, sails for Antarctica with the intention of studying the Thwaites Glacier and the rather dire auspices its demise, massively accelerated by climate change, may portend. To this point, my expectations of a thoroughly researched academic analysis, while shifted from the realm of sociology to geology, ecology and oceanography were still within the realm of expectation.
But it is here where Rush does the unexpected, especially for an academic, and the profound – she introduces the question of human accountability and responsibility into the equation. This, of course, presents a narrative problem – how is the author going to manage these two, the one scientific and the other personal, countercurrent discussions?
Rush manages this task by turning the focus of her perspective to a question both interesting and profoundly sentimental – should she and her husband, who have long wanted a child, bring life into a world whose future is so uncertain? Is it responsible to bring a child into this world at this juncture, and not only because of the child’s participation in climate-changing activities, but it is just to subject a child to a life of such precariousness?
These two lines of discussion, the one personal and the other scientific, are brought together by way of evaluating the personal through the lens of the scientific. This is the juncture where Rush’s talent as a writer, journalist and observer come to the fore. In answering those profoundly human questions, Rush finds an analogue in the massive, seemingly impersonal and unpredictable glacier that is the object of the expedition’s study.
Not only does the process of studying the glacier come to elucidate the answers to Rush’s challenging and entirely self-imposed questions, but her interviews with the cast and crew of the vessel bring new light to how best these scientists view the nature and quality of human life, human parenthood, and the communities we form.
What begins as something that appears straightforward, an author accompanying scientists to answer questions relevant to science, becomes a melodic, uncompromisingly heartfelt discussion on the merits and pitfalls of our own humanity through an assessment of our most basic biological function – to bring new life into the world.
In brief “The Quickening” is one of my favorite books I have read in a number of years, and one that I cannot recommend highly enough.
Emerson Sistare is owner of The Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough.