Briefly Very Beautiful

In Dineen’s exciting and unsettling dystopian debut, a mother strives to protect her children amid climate devastation and political violence. The story takes place in an unnamed English-speaking city, where Cass raises her 10-month-old daughter Daisy and two young stepchildren­­ while her doctor husband, Nathaniel, works abroad in a war zone. The city is terrorized by a group of male climate activists who ironically call themselves Gaia, and when they start murdering people at random in their twisted bid to save the planet, Cass makes her escape. Her controlling mother-in-law, Eden, convinces her and the children to settle with Eden’s family in a “special small” utopia called Eigleath. There, Nathaniel’s brother Arthur introduces Cass to a group of people who blame capitalism and monogamy for the planet’s woes and believe Earth can be healed only by “connect[ing] humankind back to the religion of the Great Mothers.” Then their idealistic community collapses and its members find themselves ruled by a drug cartel. Not all of the plot points are fully developed, but Dineen delivers plenty of bracing details of extreme heat and water shortages, making her portrait of Cass’s dedication to her family all the more wrenching. Readers will be eager to see what Dineen does next. Agent: Eleanor Birne, PEW Literary. (July)