THE ELEVENTH GRIEVE

A Christmas Carol meets An Inconvenient Truth in this novel.

Jake Krimmer, an ambitious Washington, D.C., businessman in his late 30s, has made a career profiting from catastrophes. As a dealer of Financial Transmission Rights, Krimmer and his team predict when areas will suffer power shortages and buy surplus electricity from elsewhere on the grid. The intellect behind the operation is his lovely assistant, Samantha Roberts, an exceptional meteorologist and young mother with an incredible knack for predicting disasters and a hidden hold on Krimmer’s affections. He suppresses any misgivings about the source of his wealth by dismissing the wild atmospheric conditions as “weird weather.” This outlook is abruptly challenged when a mysterious, alluring stranger named Rita Ten Grieve requests that he engage in a game to see if she can change his mind about the reality of climate change and the ethics of his business. She begins by accessing the private conversations of those closest to him, revealing that even his personal connections believe in human-made climate change. She then escalates her efforts by showing him virtual reality scenes of the future of the nation’s capital: the Jefferson Memorial battered by waves; the National Mall covered in FEMA trailers; the White House collapsed under a sinkhole. Her intent, she explains, is to reveal the “terror of the ordinary”—the reality of the near future. Hallberg (The Piketty Problem or The Robots Are Coming, the Robot Are Coming, 2017, etc.) begins the novel with a strong satirical bent and ends it with a sense of real urgency. The pictures of what humanity’s future will look like if climate change is not addressed are sobering and successfully invoke a call to action. Likewise, the economic and scientific information is well researched and realistically portrayed, if occasionally dense. But the plot suffers from an excess of predictability, both in regard to Rita’s game and Krimmer’s romantic journey. As Krimmer’s attitude softens into self-awareness, the writing loses some of its incisive snap. And the ending is ultimately a little too neat to be truly satisfying.

This environmental tale delivers a vital message but few surprises.