Earth 7 — an eccentric, comic elegy for a dying planet

{"text":[[{"start":6.65,"text":"The author Simon Leys reflected on the paradox of the human desire for perfection. Describing the beauty of the Pazzi Chapel in Florence, he said, “nothing has been left to chance, and therein may lie its only flaw.” Such perfection, he continued, “stands like a No Entry sign, barring the way to any interference from life”."}],[{"start":29.049999999999997,"text":"The appetite for undesirable perfection runs through Deb Olin Unferth’s new science-fiction novel Earth 7 like a slogan through a stick of seaside rock. In it, people continually try to perfect the imperfectible: that is, human life on Earth. American novelist Unferth has a track record of taking a sideways approach to issues: her last novel Barn 8 used a comic caper as a vehicle to highlight the ethics of battery farming."}],[{"start":59.9,"text":"Earth 7 has even bigger plans. It opens in a future where Earth is suffering “depop”, or falling population — following, we infer, the destructions of climate change. A loner named Rosemary — for whom “there were fewer people, yes, but still too many” — goes to live in an underwater research pod on a deep ocean shelf, bringing her ungrateful daughter Dylan (“Fish are lucky to be extinct!”) along. When Dylan realises that Earth is a busted flush (“A new beginning was not on the way. The end had come and gone. She was part of the rubble”), she leaves the pod and strikes out on her own, on what remains of the planet."}],[{"start":97.55,"text":"There she finds people pursuing perfection, such as a project to store molecules from all living things in order to create “an Earth backup”. She falls in love with a robot named Melanie — but one day realises Melanie is in fact human, when she notices the flaw in one of her toes. “It seemed somewhat large in proportion to the others — and bent.” Melanie has her own quest for perfection, reshaping her face with fillers and appearing in seven seasons of a show called Celebrity Plastics — but now finds that the “beads” implanted in her face “might . . . blow up at any moment”."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":133.85,"text":"The story staggers outward, wildly, from here, to take in human exiles on Mars, an apparent suicide cult of “sand people” who believe that “humans are a blight”, and Dylan’s later discovery that her mother has had her personality uploaded to a microchip and “relocated to a solar kite”. When Dylan is told this “space exploration . . . may be a solution”, she objects: “A solution to what? We found solutions already. We solved! Everything got worse.” It’s not hard for the reader to see this as a rebuke to other perfectionists: the tech bros who would sooner escape our planet than fix it."}],[{"start":169.55,"text":"There’s an eccentric comic energy to Earth 7 that recalls the work of George Saunders or Helen DeWitt, and the delight of the story is that you never know where it’s going next. It opens in an intimate family environment and scales up and up, through community, land and planet, ranging in time from prehistory to the unseeable vistas of the far future. It’s a book that pays attention to everything. “How can you tell what matters? It all matters.”"}],[{"start":195.85000000000002,"text":"That means it’s also a novel of gaps — some as big as the space between planets — which can be disorienting. A major character dies on the turn of a page. The timescale of the book telescopes out. “It was a decade later. No, two.” This skittish structure, dashing here and there, means that some moments demanding emotional weight — that death, for example — don’t land as they should. But as Leys noted, it is the necessary quality of life to be imperfect — and we might extend that to books too."}],[{"start":229.25000000000003,"text":"Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth Daunt Books £10.99/Graywolf Press $27, 248 pages"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":238.50000000000003,"text":"Summer books 2026: the best titles of the year so far"}],[{"start":243.30000000000004,"text":"From economics, politics and technology to travel, art and fiction — our annual round-up brings you top titles picked by FT writers and critics. Read more"}],[{"start":253.70000000000005,"text":"Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café and follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X"}],[{"start":269.05000000000007,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1784932355_9808.mp3"}