The novel also offers a scathing interrogation of economic “development”. She lives in a jumble of tenses, and though her mother tries to instruct her in linearity – “Time’s like a road, see?” – she never escapes the “dys” of “chronos”.įor her, time is like Einstein’s river, one that flows randomly, separates, folds back on itself. For Sam, who is thus captured by dyschronia, the future is not necessarily future. Sam, the central character, suffers from migraines that come with the dubious gift of knowing the future. Dyschronia by Jennifer Millsĭyschronia, Jennifer Mills’ latest novel, to some extent fits the Cli-Fi genre, but its brilliant exposition of time and its instabilities is perhaps the stronger driving force in this narrative. This is a tender novel and one in which sand becomes a metaphor for story, for the human heart, for how to keep living through “the absurdity of human endeavours”. Thanks to the magic of publications and imaginations, both are able to range widely through history and cultures.īut FB has been knocked about by life: by his hopeless love for French activist Mathilde, his thwarted desire to arrest the degradation of south Victoria’s sand dunes, and the loneliness (and satisfactions) of the life he builds. The narrator, like FB, is a polymath and like FB is sequestered in regional Victoria.

It establishes the voice of the novel, one marked by a lyrical flow, combining something not explicitly lyrical (Dune Stabilisation Engineering Difficulties) with a poetic tone and with a philosophical treatise on sand.įB is studying “the ontology of dunes” and discovering the uncertainty of a world built on sand. It is an introduction full of evocative images, and FB’s quaint and archaic self-presentation against a backdrop of shadows, sand and heath lets readers know with whom they will be travelling during the course of this novel.

Gregory Day’s A Sand Archive starts with an introduction to engineer and dreamer FB, and his “cheaply printed” volume, The Great Ocean Road: Dune Stabilisation and Other Engineering Difficulties.

The Lebs by Michael Mohammed Ahmad