![]() ![]() Now, in a world where wood is scarce, plastic must be salvaged and recycled, mostly into blocks used in construction. In the wake of the catastrophes, nations had agreed to ban the production of plastic. “After the floods destroyed the coasts, rewrote the maps with more blue, something was in the water that lapped at Ohio and Georgia and Pennsylvania.” ![]() “They followed the plastic tide,” Stine writes. Fall, work as “pluckers,” extracting from the earth its only remaining abundant resource: plastic. Stine forces readers into this shifted reality in the opening scene: Coral, named for the wildflower coralroot, journeys to the shore of Lake Erie to participate in the stripping and gleaning of a whale carcass. ![]() The effect is subtle but powerful, like walking along any Elm or Chestnut Street and wondering where all the trees went. The names are gleaned from books after the climate apocalypse has drowned coastal cities. Its people are named for places that no longer exist (Miami, Shanghai, Tahiti, the Outer Banks) and species that are extinct ( Polar Bear, Foxglove, Mangrove). “ Trashlands,” the second novel by poet Alison Stine, is a haunted book. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores. ![]()
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