DENIAL | Jon Raymond
READ MARCH 2023
This book was read in the original LAX LAB climate fiction book club, which was active between 2020 and 2023. 🕷
DENIAL |
Jon Raymond
“And as quickly as the eclipse started, it began to end. The halo of the corona was already bubbling on the edges of the black disc and a flare of diamond appeared on the outer ring. The moon and sun parted, beads of fire appearing on the lip of the bond. The edging grew into a sliver of fire, and the crack widened, letting the heat and light back down to the earth. Light showered across the surface of the ocean, returning all the dazzling colour. The jungle’s breath returned; sound returned. The dark scintillation rose up into everyday brightness.”
— Jon Raymond, Denial, 2023
It is 2052. Though the planet was not spared all the destructive impacts of climate change, humanity has finally kicked its fossil fuel addiction. This is thanks to the global protest movement The Upheavals twenty years earlier and the subsequent Toronto Trials that convicted most of the world’s oil executives and lobbyists for their environmental crimes. Not all the oil criminals were caught, however. Pipeline mastermind Robert Cave is one of the executives who escaped capture and is presently in hiding. Journalist Jack Henry gets a tip as to Cave’s whereabouts and sets out from the Pacific Northwest to Mexico to investigate.
Jon Raymond’s futuristic thriller Denial asks big questions about climate justice and how we understand our mortality on a dying planet. The novel is a fast-paced page-turner, which has been described as a "speculative suspense novel and a powerful existential inquisition about the perilous moment in which we live".
About the author
Jon Raymond — author website
Further reading, listening, viewing
‘Book Review: Jon Raymond's 'Denial,' a Compelling Novel on Climate Change’
Emma Mayer, Newsweek, 25 July 2022
‘13 Ways of Looking at Denial: Jon Raymond on the Artistic Inspiration Behind His Novel’
Jon Raymond, LitHub, 25 August 2022
Original LAX LAB book cover illustration by Emma Arnold, 2021
