London-based author Venetia Welby conjures up haunting depictions of personal loss, societal trauma and ecological collapse in her staggering second novel
Published By: Salt, 2021
It’s no longer possible to separate the personal from ecological collapse. Nobody, in contemporary or future generations, can say that climate change won’t affect them. It’s easier to deal with when it’s a societal, collective purview. But how can people deal with trauma in their personal lives against the backdrop of an inevitable doom?
That’s the question that Venetia Welby ponders wither second novel Dreamtime. Set in 2035 where time for humanity seems to be distinctly finite, it sees Sol and Kit – two lifelong companions since their childhood together in the titular cult – travel from America to Japan before time for humanity runs out, in order to find Sol’s absent father.
The sense of doubt and a coming apocalypse bubbling under the surface in both scenarios is indistinguishable in inescapable tragedy. But tied together by their friendship and themes of addiction, sexual abuse, power imbalances, American imperialism and deep personal emptiness, the wires cross in beautifully wrought, devastating ways.
Brilliance In Briefness
Welby’s real masterstroke is, as alluded to above, her ability to weave so much heft into short, stark observations – often within the space of a sentence or two. The novel’s only 256 pages, but it feels like an epic; all the ponderous weight that usually comes with that description whittled down into biting, brilliantly acerbic truths.
There’s beautiful poetry here as much as there’s timeless sardonic dryness. Almost Stephen King-esque dry one-liners come out of nowhere, to hilarious effect:
‘He mounts his electric bike with regret and an extravagant erection.’
But the humour both masks the reality and plays second fiddle to it. Because the pervasive sense that the circles in this novel – ecological disaster, familial loss, heartbreak – are never going to be completed runs engrossingly throughout.
A Worldwide Sense of Time And Place
Welby has lived on four continents, including both America and Asia. She imbues Dreamtime with exactly the kind of worldliness that could only come from living that experience. The future and pasts of these cities shimmer and sparkle in their misery; her depictions of broken-down metropolises and austere military camps are particularly resonant.
Perhaps most of all though, Dreamtime’s real coup-d’état is its assessment of memory, both personal and worldly. How addiction, a skewed sense of intimacy and void-like chasms in love can deform memory on the one hand. And how entire societies and communities remember injustices on the other.
It’s via those two channels that Welby makes the inescapable permeate through every feeling and happening. For example, how chapter titles like ‘Flight’ change connotations when you know everything Sol and Kit are going through. And how, in the novel’s surrealist final third, it’s still people’s faith in each other – or lack thereof – that anchors them.
The Haunting of the Year?
Dreamtime is an often deeply disturbing, haunting and nightmarish read, and yet is complete and realistic in an organic way. Welby doesn’t pretend she has any answers. The novel is, in essence, a presentation of harrowing truths and the confusion they cause.
It’s not the first book to wrangle such themes against the backdrop of environmental catastrophe, and it won’t be the last. But it is probably the best you’ll read this year.
You can purchase Dreamtime here.