Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays

In this eclectic but uneven essay collection, Kingsnorth (Beast), an English novelist and cofounder of the Dark Mountain Project, tries to reconcile his past with the present, highlighting his growing disillusion with the environmental movement. These 18 essays, most of which were originally published between 2010 and 2016, deal broadly with feelings of frustration, disconnection, and loss. In his youth Kingsnorth fancied himself a conservationist, “preventing the destruction of beauty and brilliance, speaking up for the small and the overlooked and the things that could not speak for themselves.” Now, however, Kingsnorth admits to disenchantment with the environmental movement’s shift toward sustainability and questions its effectiveness. In “Rescuing the English,” he ruminates on ways in which Britain has been changed by global capitalism. “The small and the local, the traditional and the distinctive, were being stamped out by the powerful,” he writes. Kingsnorth bemoans the erosion of England’s national identity and cautions against an influx of newcomers, sentiments that have an analogue in certain aspects of the Brexit movement. Some selections, including one on his frustrations with the quantification of environmental issues and another on the “difference between action and activism,” prove difficult to dive into or to decipher. Kingsnorth offers an idiosyncratic perspective as well as an occasional test of the reader’s patience. [em]Agent: Jessica Woollard, David Higham Associates. (Aug.) [/em]