How a good 'cli-fi' novel like Mireille Juchau's THE WORLD WITHOUT US could be reviewed in the media

Mireille Juchau’s ''The World Without Us'' is a clifi novel that is both warmly engaged with the human and coolly cerebral at the same time, a sensual, intelligent, mindful book about the ways in which our individual stories mesh with larger narratives of nature and world. A symbolically loaded and exquisitely written cli fi about a society at the end of its psychological and ecological tether. This is what cli fi literature was meant to be. A tour de force of the genre kind.

NOTE: Cli-fi novels are not policy wonk propaganda tracts about government stats and scientific charts, and they are not marketing department genre campaigns, either. In fact, very few real cli-fi novels have been published yet, other than  FLIGHT BEHAVIOR and ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW. In the end, of course, it is up to each and every author to decide how they want to promote their book, and only they can decide this -- not literary critics, not PR promotion people, not policy wonks, not climate activists. Only the author can decide. In this case, it is completely up to the author Mireille Juchau to decide how she wants her book to be promoted in the media and how she wants readers to approach it, in terms of genre, if any genre is needed at all.

When Karen Hardy at a Canberra newspaper reported in her view that Juchau was "unsure" whether her new novel was ''cli-fi." we have no idea what Juchau said in reply to the reporter's query which was presumably: ''So Mireille, is your new book cli fi or what?''

In fact, we  do not have to know Juchau's answer.

The story she tells in her novel is all that matters, and whether it be cli-fi or not, is not important. The story is paramount.

For me, from my point of view, it's an excellent example of a good cli-fi novel, humn and full of emotional moments that pull the reader along. I know it did that for me. That is what cli-fi should do.