New York Times Editors' Choice Pick, and was on numerous best-of 2015 lists. His linked collection of stories, The Beggar's Garden, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Prize for Fiction, and won the Vancouver Book Award. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Globe & Mail.Greenwood, his most recent novel, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
At the Guardian, Christie tagged ten top works of eco-fiction, including:
The Road by Cormac McCarthyRead about another entry on the list.
Though the exact cause of the calamity that necessitates all kinds of scrabbling barbarism remains unclear, its human ramifications are described with ruthless specificity. In an interview, McCarthy later claimed that he imagined the disaster as the aftermath of a comet strike, but I don’t buy it. This is eco-fiction through and through. And now that I’m a father, I can’t help but read The Road as an ode to parenting in a fallen world; to sighting the disaster that you hope your children won’t have to face, but know deep-down they will and must. Regularly I have my own Road-type conversations with mysons: “Why do we buy gas if it’s destroying our planet, Dad?” “Because I need to get to work.” “Then why don’t you work somewhere closer to our house?” and on it goes. I mean really, what’s the best way to tell a child that this wondrous world they’ve just come to know is hurtling towards ruin?
The Road appears on Emily Temple's list of the ten books that defined the 2000s, Ceridwen Christensen's list of ten novels that end their apocalypses on a beach, Steph Post's top ten list of classic (and perhaps not so classic) road trip books, a list of five of the best climate change novels, Claire Fuller's top five list of extreme survival stories, Justin Cronin's top ten list of world-ending novels, Rose Tremain's six best books list, Ian McGuire's ten top list of adventure novels, Alastair Bruce's top ten list of books about forgetting, Jeff Somers's lists of five science fiction novels that really should be considered literary classics and eight good, bad, and weird dad/child pairs in science fiction and fantasy, Amelia Gray's ten best dark books list, Weston Williams's top fifteen list of books with memorable dads, ShortList's roundup of the twenty greatest dystopian novels, Mary Miller's top ten list of the best road books, Joel Cunningham's list of eleven "literary" novels that include elements of science fiction, fantasy or horror, Claire Cameron's list of five favorite stories about unlikely survivors, Isabel Allende's six favorite books list, the Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Joseph D’Lacey's top ten list of horror books, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five unforgettable fathers from fiction, Ken Jennings's list of eight top books about parents and kids, Anthony Horowitz's top ten list of apocalypse books, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five notable "What If?" books, John Mullan's list of ten of the top long walks in literature, Tony Bradman's top ten list of father and son stories, Ramin Karimloo's six favorite books list, Jon Krakauer's five best list of books about mortality and existential angst, William Skidelsky's list of the top ten most vivid accounts of being marooned in literature, Liz Jensen's top 10 list of environmental disaster stories, the Guardian's list of books to change the climate, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and the Times (of London) list of the 100 best books of the decade. In 2009 Sam Anderson of New York magazine claimed "that we'll still be talking about [The Road] in ten years."
--Marshal Zeringue
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