Fiction Reviews
Saltcrop
(2025) Yume Kitasei, Harper Voyager, £18.99, hrdbk, 376pp, ISBN 978-0-008-76466-1
A story about three sisters, one lost, two searching. Set somewhere unspecified, but probably the North American West Coast, this is a near-future ravaged by climate change, where the crops are blighted and, increasingly, so are the people. The oldest sister, Nora, is missing. She’d been working for the megacorp Renewal, whose chemical solution to the ever- mutating blight has trapped rural communities in a cycle of famine, poverty and disease. Now she’s on a mission to find ‘clean’ blight resistant crops, but she’s disappeared.
The two remaining sisters abandon their plans and chase after Nora in a barely seaworthy boat, far up the coast where the air is cold and the nights are long. Every where they go, they just miss her, before hooking up with the seemingly helpful Jackson, who guides them even farther from home. Jackson, of course, is not what he seems, or at least not what the sisters hope he will be, and Nora remains tantalisingly out of reach.
Animals are developing mutations because of the chemicals used to combat the blight, and a deadly infection threatens to engulf the middle sister, Carmen. Both the inner world of the sister and the wider world is falling apart, and the stakes are high.
Saltcrop manages to be both plot driven and deeply character-led, which is impressive. The sisters are very different, and each of them gets a section to give their perspective. The youngest, Skipper, is distrustful of company and spends her time in the boatyard, barely contributing to the meagre family finances. Carmen has a nurse’s job lined up and makes relationships easily: with Nora gone she’s the breadwinner and main support to their grandmother, whose dementia is growing. Nora is a scientist and her quest has the potential to reveal the secrets behind Renewal and the blight. The sisters bicker, argue and fight, but they have a deep mutual respect. Although that doesn’t readily translate into trust. Carmen, in particular, nearly sacrifices everything to find her sister, including letting her job drift away and keeping the passage of her disease from everyone, which nearly kills her. And, as they all discover, this is not a safe world, and Renewal doesn’t reveal its secrets without a fight.
The world-building in this novel is excellent, though not always subtle, and highly credible. The sisters are believable too, for instance in the way they fail to properly communicate with each other, leading to all sorts of problems, and the novel’s take on corporate greed, ruthlessness and indifference has uneasy echoes in real life. The setting and the planet’s future may be bleak but many of the people in this novel are kind and selfless and there’s a cheerful optimism running throughout, despite the odds being very much against a happy ending. But don’t bet against three stubborn sisters on a selfless mission.
Mark Bilsborough
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