A freshly picked stack of books screams summer for me, more than ice cream ever will. A book, a beautiful, long lazy day and a spot outside to read is my idea of perfection this time of year.
Over the past decade, mentions of text messages and social media apps have become ubiquitous in the lives of characters in novels. It’s part of our lives now, so it is of course a part of theirs. What will it take to make those same characters that so easily text, casually get into their electric cars, throw oranges in composts, or forgo fast fashion? Tackling the climate crisis will require a shift in our daily values and actions. So how do things become the norm so seamlessly we don’t notice them? Maybe when we see more examples in our books and on our screens.
In Sarah Blake’s new book Clean Air, the worst of the climate crisis has come and gone and now people are living 10 years into the aftermath. While the book isn’t specifically about the climate crisis, the environment is almost a supporting character that keeps drawing your attention, making you wonder how the characters got to where they are. I spoke recently with Sarah about her book, motherhood and more.
The interview has been edited and condensed.
Tell me a bit about the book.
Sarah: Clean Air is about a world where plants have enacted revenge upon us. They've expelled so much pollen that it's impossible to breathe, and the only people still alive live in places with filtered air, so in a hospital or some communities that planned for this to happen. The book takes place 10 years after the pollen disaster, and many people have died. But new communities have cropped up made of big concrete slabs, where plants are kept far away, and everybody lives in sealed pods. The book follows one family, Izabel and her daughter Cami. The little girl starts sleep talking at the same time a serial killer starts going around the town. Izabel ends up crossing paths with him, and their stories become more and more entangled.
I'm curious about the story line. Did you develop the setting first or the characters?
Sarah: The world definitely came first. I was diagnosed with asthma when I was 8, and then it didn't come up again until I was in my early 30s, when all of a sudden, I kept ending up in the ER every spring with asthma that I couldn't get under control. I ended up getting allergy shots every week, and I developed a whole new relationship with my environment because I was so sensitive to it.
When you get allergy shots, you have to sit there for half an hour and wait to make sure that you don't have a terrible reaction, so I had a lot of time to think, and I started developing this world.
One of the lines that stood out to me was in one of Izabel's letters to the killer; she writes, "I wanna tear it all down, but I don't want anyone to die."
Sarah: Izabel's trying to figure out the mentality of someone who's decided to take out their rage on the world. She feels like maybe that impulse isn't so far from the anxiety she's having towards the world, which seems very strange and very false and like no one is talking enough about where they come from and how they could fix things and how they should be acknowledging where they are. It's definitely based off of my feelings when you hear all these things that we're doing and not doing. I hope the book opens doors of thought.
You have a 10-year-old; what are some of your fears about the climate crisis and did writing the book help you process them?
Sarah: I'm not worried that my son will end up in an airtight pod unless, of course, he decides to become an astronaut. But I do have fears about what climate change is going to look like in terms of extreme weather. What kind of extremes he's going to have to deal with, and what kinds of things humans are going to turn into the new normal over and over again that are increasingly bad and probably shouldn't be normalized.
Given the world you created, it's fascinating that you made Izabel a mom, and obviously, lots of people are having conversations about having kids during the climate crisis. Why was it important to you that Izabel be a mom?
Sarah: She's been living in this post world for a while when she becomes a mom, and that's kind of, in a way, hopeful. But she struggles with it. She's got this line where she says, 'did I want this? Or is this a biological, species-type thing?'
I made her a mom, though, because I wanted to explore the difficulty of stay-at-home momhood and how meaningful it is. I really loved being a stay-at-home mom, but it also wrecked me in some ways, and it just always feels complicated.
I knew I was going to talk about how stuck Isabelle felt and how she needed to figure that out. But I didn't want it to seem like it was because she wasn't enjoying motherhood. Or that even if, if she's not enjoying motherhood sometimes, it doesn't mean she's not enjoying and loving her child. There are so many different layers to how you make a life that's balanced enough that you can give everything you want to give at all the times you want to give it.
̴ Bridget
Reading: It’s the names that always get me—chosen with so much hope for the future. I always force myself to read the stories of the victims of mass shootings. It feels like I owe them that since as a whole my country is so unwilling to stop the carnage. Want to do something? While it will never be enough, Here’s how to help the victims of the Uvalde shooting from the Texas Tribune. And “Think Gun Laws Are Hard to Change? Try Gun Culture,” by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic is an important read. Finally, for some hopefully news, Connecticut is one of several states where schools are now required to teach climate change.
Working: On a piece about getting plastics out of oyster farming for Modern Farmer, an article on cottage cheese for Martha Stewart Living and back to school routines for The Day Magazine.
Published: “Ali Slagle, Author of the Book ‘I Dream of Dinner (So You Don't Have To),’ Shares Her Weeknight Meal Secrets” for Martha Stewart Living, and “These Farmers and Ranchers Turn Trash Into Treasure,” for Modern Farmer.