Book Review: “Honeymoons in Temporary Locations” by Ashley Shelby
A (Climate) Change
If anyone has been following me on Medium for a lengthy time needs no introduction to the work of Ashely Shelby. Her debut novel (which I reviewed on Medium), South Pole Station, was published seven years ago, so, on second thought, you may need a long memory to have that introduction waived. In any event, Shelby is back with a short story collection called Honeymoons in Temporary Locations, and, like the novel that preceded it, its focus is on environmentalism and climate change. However, the difference between the two works couldn’t be more (polar) opposite each other. Whereas South Pole Station was in a realist mode, Honeymoons in Temporary Locations sees Shelby trying her hand at hard SF, magic realism, and slipstream fiction. It’s a challenging, experimental work whose primary focus is its brevity at some 150-odd pages long. It’s as though Shelby wanted to get in, make her point(s), and get out as fast as she could. While the work appears to string together logically, the parts and not the sum are sometimes the most impressive thing about this book. This book is about the environment and people’s reactions to its degradation. Mental illness plays a part in this narrative, which may make it attractive for some.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part is a coupling of stories, the most memorable of the two being “Muri,” a novelette about a group of polar bears being transported from the melting ice of the Arctic to Antarctica who suddenly start talking and acting human, mutinying the ship they are being transported on. The second part is a series of faux documents, including advertisements for cruise lines touring sunken American cities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and menus for a coffee chain that can no longer serve coffee due to decimated world bean crops. The third part is the patient histories of those taking part in a clinical trial for a drug called Climafeel, a treatment for a condition known as solastalgia. This real-life term is described as the “human emotional response to active and predicted climate change impacts.” The best of these case studies is the one involving a young boy sent to a Bible camp where its pastors, acting as camp counselors, berate and physically assault anyone who counters claims that climate change is the (positive) work of God.
Shelby’s writing here recalls New Weird author Jeff VanderMeer, whose City of Saints and Madmen story collection is the closest bearing point to her work at the intersection of environmentalism and science fiction. Honeymoons in Temporary Locations is a short book examining some challenging issues facing humanity. Shelby acknowledges that our work to abet climate change is not enough and that we can see massive coastal erosion in as little as 10 years from now. This is a hard book to read — not only because some of it is written in academic prose but because it acknowledges that the point of conservationism efforts is long past being effective. Shelby seems to argue that we are on a collision course to extinction. After all, the bears of “Muri” only want to remain at home so they can die on familiar lands. That’s not to say there isn’t a bit of humor in these pieces. For instance, the author is the subject of one of these short stories, as the subsequent subject of a climate change “crimes” podcast detailing the death of an ash tree to insects, which is chillingly played for laughs. And that’s alsonot to say that this book isn’t without faults. I know this is a cliché among collections such as this, but some stories sputter and fail. I had trouble making heads or tails for most of the pieces in the book’s third section. Some of the “documents” in the second part were so laden with the stuff of academia that it was difficult to penetrate.
Still, Honeymoons in Temporary Locations is essential reading. It may be the epitaph of a doomed humanity, but I sincerely hope such pessimism won’t play out in real life and that Shelby might be wrong. And perhaps the parts of the book that didn’t work so well might benefit from a re-read. The book’s short length is also one of its assets: it can be digested in a couple of hours. That said, Honeymoons in Temporary Locations will give you fodder to think about the state of the world for those two hours and make you wonder if there’s still anything that can be done — particularly at the Gen Z level — to save the world. That the book also contains talking polar bears adds to its charms. Ultimately, this collection is a marked change from the author’s previous work. One must wonder which path she will take from here: back to the realism of South Pole Station or further down the path of her current book’s surrealism. In any event, Shelby is making a name for herself as the writer of environmental fiction, and, the world be damned, she has something crucial to say about things.
Ashley Shelby’s Honeymoons in Temporary Locations was published by the University of Minnesota Press on June 25, 2024.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
