Harare Review of Books

240 pages.

First published in July 2022.

Genre: Cli-fi.

Denial opens with a futuristic doctor’s (ophthalmologist’s?) appointment. It is 2052, and the narrator, a journalist, is looking at a holographic projection of his own eye (RAD!). The doctor spots something during this high-tech exam, but he’s fairly sure it’s innocuous. After this seemingly pointless beginning, we are launched into the main plot of the novel.

The climate change battle has been won, at least in terms of the narrative. Young people protest, and all of the old polluters—the executives of oil companies, and the like, where they could be found, have been prosecuted in what’s known as the Toronto Trials (reminiscent of the Nuremberg trials). Our narrator, Jack, gets a tip-off about a fugitive, Robert Cave, who is hiding in Mexico. Jack sets out to entrap and expose Cave, but unexpectedly makes friends with him, which complicates things somewhat.

Denial has some really beautiful writing, and Raymond creates a very atmospheric setting. The plot is interesting, too, but anti-climactic, I felt. Everything happens more or less as expected—which is not a criticism, really, but three weeks after I finished the book, I had to go back to it to remember the details, rather like the memory of candy floss/cotton candy. The book is interesting for a possible—somewhat hopeful—future, which climate fiction does not do enough of; but most of the narrative focuses on the build-up to Caves’s exposure.

TL;DR Beautiful writing, middling plot.

My rating: 6/10.