Honeymoons in Temporary Locations by Ashley Shelby is a compelling collection of interconnected short stories that reflect our world, wher we have come from and where we are going. Usually in speculative fiction/ Dystopic fiction, I refer to plausbility and being a book of our times and that is exactly what this is. Climate, dystopia, social issues. A book that can almost be perceived as a record of experience as well as speculation about the future in a witty, cerebral fiction

Fascinating, entertaining and very enjoyable. A quick read, but a read of great substance

Thank you to Netgalley, University of Minnesota Press | Univ Of Minnesota Press and Ashley Shelby for this compelling ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

In the opening story of this anthology of interconnected tales, the brilliant Muri, there are talking bears. The world has effectively ended (“Impact”). There’s a “sulphate aerosol veil” over the Poles; geoengineering has happened. And there’s a project to relocate polar bears from the Arctic, which is now practically non-existent, to the Antarctic, to buy the bears a little more time. However, these particular bears of this story are not, to say the least, on board with the plan—and so they take over the ship they’re on.

The anthology is profoundly emotionally intelligent, exploring deeply and extrapolating into an alarmingly near future the impact on the human psyche of ecological catastrophe. Honeymoons in Temporary Locations, the only other formal “story” apart from Muri, features climate refugees who are forcibly (by their situation) moved to safer areas of the country (the US); this story is interesting in itself, about, possibly, mental breakdown; but also, its atmosphere is one of loss and despair, of anger and powerlessness, of a time when people are waiting for the world—or humanity—to end.

In the archive section of the book, Documents (recovered), there are post-climate breakdown cruises to see nearly submerged cities like Miami, Boston, and Savannah. People lead with their carbon compliance status when meeting new people. What might mental illness look like for people who love(d) the earth? The focus of many of the stories in the collection (in many forms, including also archived materials and clinical histories) is solastalgia, a term coined by Glenn Albrecht in the 2005 article Solastalgia: a new concept in human health and identity, and that’s defined by the NIH as the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment. Could there be pharmacological solutions? And then, what might billionaires, with their bunkers, do? Would they create support groups? Capitalise somehow on the situation? (You know they would.) My favourite theme is the recurring Ersatz Cafe: what might be on the menu of a post-Impact cafe? Shelby imagines some really smart things.

I found this collection a thoughtful exploration of a future that has us further along the same trajectory on which we are currently, but that considers our planet’s more than human aspects. What would our co-inhabitants on Earth say to us as the world dies? What would the effect be on us—and that of the knowledge of the end of humanity? Shelby’s collection of imaginaries is something I’ll keep going back to.

Many thanks to NetGalley and to the University of Minnesota Press for access to an early DRC.

This book had a few interesting ideas at play, but ultimately just made me feel how I feel about books that take place during a pandemic: I already live/lived that, I'm not interested in reading about it anymore. The climate commentary was interesting, but the dystopia that this book imagines is already really a reality. I felt that the humor aspect of this didn't really come to fruition, and the characters were hard for me to connect to. But, I think my aversion to reading about a "future" climate dystopia was probably mostly why I had such a weird time with this book.

This is a short story collection about solastalgia, a type of grief caused by changes in the natural world (which are mostly caused by climate change). It's a fascinating concept that the author delved really deep into in these short stories, some of which are written in really unique styles that are closer to things you'd find in an epistolary novel than normal short stories, making them feel unique. the stories themselves can vary a bit in quality but that's just how most short story collections are. There's enough cohesion shared by them all because of the uniting concept (solastalgia) and so even if there are very few (if any) connections in terms of the plot and characters, these stories still feel like they belong together. It's a good work of speculative fiction that feels both realistic and imaginative in the best possible ways.

Buckle Up!
This sharply written book will get under your skin quickly. This collection of climate disaster stories is a series of absurd stories. Or are they? I think that is what I liked most. All of the stories varied widely in style and content but all were absurd..to a point. I think even talking bears, screaming trees (!), camps for troubled boys and women who lose their wives on environmental refugee resettlement trips will test you, scar you and never leave you. Shelby has written a series of stories that are absurd but also easily believable - and that is the rub.

Honeymoons in Temporary Locations is a textured, complex and brain-blowing collection that you will never forget. This will be an award winner! #minnestoapress #honeymoonsintemporarylocations #ashleyshelby

This book has some interesting ideas - climate fiction with a variety of scenarios. Unfortunately, many of us are already living in the creeping climate change dystopia that this book imagines.

It's like Jeff VanderMeer's <i>How to Blow Up a Pipeline</i>.

This book is a short story collection, including a segment in a scrapbook format, all that connect in one way or another to climate change.

"Muri", the opening story, is the strongest of the bunch. It is the most formally interesting and the one that has the sharpest point to it. It is also pretty damn weird.

"'Incident on Yellowstone Trail'" is the standout, envisioning climate disasters as through podcasting tropes.

My favorite though is the titular story, a short story version of a bourgeois novel caught up in climate migration.

There are two problems, one that I do not really know what to do with. The first is that these stories do not belong in a collection together. They are by the same author and have connecting facts and events, but the tonal shifts here are disorienting, case in point being the first two stories and the leap from moody magical realism where a character outright states the message to satirical black comedy and all subtext (if that). I actually think that "Ersatz Cafe" is probably funnier and more meaningful if read outside of the context of the other stories. More particularly, the framing devices as regards most specifically the latter half of the book, as sort of background materials to a disorder and then clinical trials around a drug to treat that disorder, uniformly weaken the stories there, two of which ("They Don't Tell You Where to Put the Pain" and "Your Ghost Remains Upright") are both quality, albeit (you will notice the theme here) for totally different reasons.

The more difficult problem is the invocation of Solastalgia. Solistalgia is a concept created by Glenn Albrecht and described on wikipedia (please don't judge) as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solastalgia">the lived experience of negatively perceived environmental change</a>. I do not know how else to put it but that <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/solastalgia-definition-symptoms-traits-causes-treatment-5089413">it's a real thing</a> currently being studied, that may be more formally recognized and even if not, sadly, will become more prevalent as a thing that people have to deal with.

The book hypothesizes a more formal recognition of the problem, and specifically drug companies trying to get business with medicating it (what is being tried in the aforementioned trials). And as a bit of snark here but <spoiler>I have to call out the contradiction of representing drug companies as transparently greedy but then having it the other way with a malign treatment center where the 'throw away your pills' mentality is shown as perverse. The points are reconcilable, but, again, you will notice a theme here.</spoiler> But it goes beyond that, creating specific psychological manifestations and mania associated with the disorder.

Look, I specifically do not know the literature here on the topic, but this feels sketchy to me. Like if I were to write a story about how all everyone with Level 2 Autism started coming down with pica, synesthesia, and flatulence, you might question my choices, even if I had some thematic purpose around the treatment of disability that I was looking to invoke through it. It gets particularly ahead of its skis in the sense that <spoiler>if "Muri" is based on an event that is actually happening, and there are no hints there not to take it at face value, then what exactly is this as a disorder</spoiler>? There is not a formal reason for it, either, except as a tail wagging the dog sense to justify grouping the final package of short stories. Which all work on their own as sort of disordered thinking under the results of climate change, no arc conceit necessary.

Other than the tragedy of our reality, I suppose.

My thanks to Ashley Shelby, for writing the book, and to the publisher, University of Minnesota Press, for making the ARC available to me.

Thank you University of Minnesota Press, Ashley Shelby and Netgalley for this free ARC in exchange for a review.

I couldn't connect with any of the characters or find any reasons to care about the stories in this. There's supposed to be humour in this, but it isn't funny.