Country Style book club: what we’re poring over for the month of August

Macfarlane’s adventures in Ecuador, India and Canada refresh and stretch an imagination that is beginning to tire of messages about the environment. They raise the alarm, yet day by day the depredations continue.

In Ecuador, the threat to the Los Cedros cloud forest’s rivers comes from Cornerstone and ENAMI, an Ecuadorian mining company. They won concessions to mine. President Correa needed cash because the price of crude oil fell by 50 per cent. They came with drills, maps, helicopters, chainsaws, feller bunchers, log loaders, blasting teams, river dammers and excavators.

Then, on November 10, 2022, the Constitutional Court of Quito invoked Ecuador’s Rights of Nature legislation and the mining companies were ordered to quit within weeks. Of course, there’s resistance to the resistance. Alba Bermeo Puin, a pregnant 24-year-old, took a bullet to the chest for her success in closing down a Chinese-Ecuadorian gold mining operation.

In India, the enemy is toxic effluent from factories. The Uttarakhand High Court decreed that rivers should be recognised as “living entities”, inspired by New Zealand’s Whanganui River Claims Settlement Act 10 days earlier. The laws are too late for so many species, but Hindu awareness of patterns beyond what’s recorded supports the traditional rhythms and routes of rivers. They are deities.

Finally, Macfarlane confronts the villainy of Canada’s Romaine Project. Hydro-Québec’s New Social Acceptability Framework says: “Your concerns are evolving and so are we.” Just so. The multi-dam complex spells death to the Mutehekau Shipu basin. Hour by hour, Macfarlane commits to memory and his notebooks the terrain and the people who belong within it. Both personal and political, this book is unlike any other.

Yes, beautiful and loving. Even 15-year-old Vanessa has promise within her that suggests her current awfulness will pass. Dad is puzzled by Mum’s choice of a holiday destination. Mum is writing a novel and goes for long walks.

Ten-year-old Alex is wise beyond her years. When she hears the click of a camera and turns to see the man across the street staring at her from his balcony, she stares right back. Alex finds a friend on the edge of a lagoon. Kahu has a pounamu; polished, precious. “I’d be in so much trouble if I lost it.” Together, they search for a young girl’s body; a victim whose case was never solved.

The family’s essential wholesomeness will be tested in several ways. Can they ever be as they were? On the way home, Dad buys plums. Mum whispers they’re the best she’s ever tasted. Dad says “and half what you’d pay in Wellington”. Normality is tugging at this discombobulated family.

You want them to be OK. But Alex is wearing the pounamu as a necklace. A lot has happened and there will surely be more to come.

“Doing the best I can” is how Maz views her role as mother to two girls. Not true. She could do a lot better. She’s at the pub every night, leaving the twins alone at home. Sometimes without supper. Though she herself is like an eel in the ocean, she’s never bothered to teach Lili and Honey to swim. Worst of all, she openly favours Honey, the pretty one.

Time passes. Honey dies from a heroin overdose. Lili checks on her mother, tidies, fills the dog’s empty bowl. As is the way with dogs, he bears no grudge and loves his feckless owner.

Haunted by the belief that Honey’s death was not an accident, Lili hunts for clues and, in the process, is helped by a homeless stranger who is searching for his son. Pete’s phobic about cars and going indoors because his head is mush due to a course of electroconvulsive therapy. He’s forgotten that his son died 15 years ago.

He teaches Lili to swim. The truth, when it’s revealed, is not what Lili hoped for, yet it heals. Deeply moving.

A seven-year-old boy, Gordon, sits opposite his father, a GP, who is questioning his son about what his mother “has been up to today”. The boy invents acts of incompetence or negligence. He knows that to win his father’s approval he must do this. However, asks this wonderful storyteller, what if he wasn’t named Gordon? His mother, Cora, had three options when she wheeled him to the registry office shortly after his birth. There was “Gordon” – in the family tradition all first sons were Gordon.

Then there was “Julian”, Cora’s choice. But she asked her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, what she would name him. Maia looked down at the infant’s cheeky, jolly, definitely not Gordonesque face. “Bear,” she said. Perfect.

We follow what happens in each of the three cases. Gordon, son of a cowed and abused mother, is a swaggering, odious, imitation of his father – without the senior Gordon’s undoubted talent. Julian? Cora’s defiance has consequences. The traumatised children grow up in Ireland, reared by their grandmother, and as adults there are stops and starts. But Bear. Bear? Bear! The senior Gordon’s rage knows no bounds and he is removed. The family blossoms.

Knapp set to work once her children had fled the nest, so we know this debut simmered over many years. May there be many more from Knapp because this is outstanding. And however guiltless, blameless, happy and secure you may feel, you’ll wonder when you read this story if this could have been you.

If there’s a prize for the most tantalising first chapter ever, Mara gets it. What are we in for here? She does not disappoint. Within a genteel South Dublin housing estate, there are four murders, two failed attempts, one baby targeted by a psychopath, two innocents in hospital, two divorces, and a sullen boy lurking in a dark room hiding a knife, his mother telling herself she does not need to know why.

All this is the result of one brief email, sent accidentally to an entire WhatsApp group instead of to just one sister. Suspicion falls here, there and everywhere. Paranoia peaks. And when the tension finally drops for a mere page or two, there are quixotic characters to enjoy.

One mistake and the community will never be the same again. Something to ponder. By the way, Ireland has an interesting Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act which deters trolls and pernicious influencers. We need to be constantly updating protection from these cruel and reckless meddlers.

A bookstore put this book in the front window with a sign saying: “Buy it before it’s banned.” Wynn-Williams was Mark Zuckerberg’s international politics adviser. She had a massive mortgage and excellent pay. But these pressures blinded her to workers’ rights and normal boundaries. Even when she was in labour, she held a laptop and was producing data for her prurient junior boss, while her female senior boss made strange demands and sulked if these were not met.

The main problem was that everyone kowtowed to Zuck. Wynn-Williams says Meta was “awash with money”. She asked Zuck about his personal spending. Houses, cars, travel and parties gave him scant pleasure. He did get a thrill from food. Good to know.

As Zuckerberg’s involvement with overseas networks escalated, the bottom line became paramount. Promises of user privacy were wordsmithed and fed to the media and the courts. Advertising rates are now the core business fuelled by ingenious ways to capture eyeballs. Those cosy sentiments about connection and sharing belong to another era.