More and more, we’re learning that there are physical and mental health benefits to spending time in nature. That’s great news for naturally outdoors-y folks, but if you’re more inclined to a concrete jungle or your happy place has four walls (like me), realising those benefits can mean a bit of a jump out of our comfort zones. I figure baby steps is the best way to do it, and that’s why I turn to books. These fifteen engrossing nature fiction books are nearly as good as the real thing.
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Richard Powell’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Overstory, illuminates the hidden life of trees. The story “unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond”. Many other authors have personified trees or otherwise honoured them in fiction, but Powell doesn’t rely on fantasy to endear us to these essential pillars of our ecosystem. You’ll never look at the trees bordering your yard or local park the same way again.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
The family at the heart of Wild Dark Shore has been living on Shearwater Island for six years (a fictional location that McConaghy based closely on the real Macquarie Island, about 1,500km south of Australia’s southernmost point). Grief over the loss of his wife drove Dominic to take his three children to the most remote location he could find, but even that wasn’t far enough to escape their ghosts. The woman, Rowan, who washes up on shore has a connection to the island, one that she’s keeping from the family – and they have their secrets, too. Read my full review of Wild Dark Shore here.
Go As A River by Shelley Read
In 1948, 17-year-old Victoria Nash encounters a young man at a crossroads. He asks her for directions, and they walk together into the small Colorado town she calls home – and her life changes forever. That’s where Go As A River begins, the new novel by fifth-generation Coloradoan Shelley Read. It turns out the man Victoria meets, Wilson Moon, is Native American. He’s effectively run out of town by suspicious and racist locals – but Victoria is captivated by him, and they fall in love. Read my full review of Go As A River here.
The Signature Of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert spent years – years! – researching moss, so that she could bring the central character of The Signature of All Things, a botanist, to life. Alma inherits her father’s money and his fascination with the natural world, in a time (the early 1800s) when women weren’t supposed to have either of those things. As a character, Alma is unforgettable: passionate, bold, and observant. This is a book about the balance between the scientific and the spiritual, love and logic, evolution and nature in all of its forms.
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
The eponymous Birnam Wood is a guerilla gardening group (yes, that’s a thing). They plant crops wherever they can, usually without permission and on land owned by somebody else. A recent landslide that has cut off the New Zealand town of Thorndike presents a unique opportunity for them to occupy a whole farm – unfortunately, a billionaire has designs on the same land, with intentions of building an end-times bunker. This is an engrossing nature fiction novel about the drive to survive and the forms it takes.
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Watership Down is set in the Berkshire and Hampshire countryside, near where Adams and his family lived. The story follopws a group of anthropomorphised rabbits from the Sandleford warren. The inciting incident comes quickly, when a small weirdo rabbit named Fiver has a “frightening vision” of the warren’s imminent destruction. He convinces his best mate, Hazel, to help him round up as many of their rabbit friends as possible and escape before the Bad Thing comes – but that’s not the only challenge they’ll face. Read my full review of Watership Down here.
Changeling by Matt Wesolowski
There’s a spooky element to Changeling rooted in its nature setting. Wentshire Forest is infamous for strange, inexplicable phenomena: knocking sounds, whispers in the woods, angry trees, fiendish spirits, and so on. The mostly-unspoken implication the whole way through is that a missing child could have been taken by the forests’ inhabitants, and they sabotaged any efforts to find him. The eerie forest, the sinister shadows, the lingering sense of the Other hiding between the trees – it’s all played out to perfection. Read my full review of Changeling here.
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
Not all nature is green and soft and above ground – indeed, there’s more under water than we even know. Whalefall takes the reader down, deep into the belly of the whale (literally). Jay Gardiner is undertaking a solo dive into the ocean in the hopes of recovering his father’s remains. Unfortunately, he finds himself tangled in the anatomy of a giant squid, and swallowed by a sperm whale. He only has an hour of oxygen in his tank, and his father’s voice in his head telling him how to survive. Read my full review of Whalefall here.
Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
In Where The Crawdads Sing, the “Marsh Girl” Kya lives alone on the land. Her only friends are the gulls, and her home is the sand of the North Carolina coastline. The people in the village of Barkley Cove have gossiped about her for years. When a handsome man turns up dead, she’s the first person they suspect. But we fear what we don’t know, and Kya is more than they realise. Strangely, Kya’s loneliness is actually a balm, a protective shield against the terrors of the world. It’s when she reaches out, searching for love and recognition, that she runs into trouble.
Dyschronia by Jennifer Mills
Dyschronia is set on the South Australian coast in the fictional town of Clapstone. The main character, Sam, is a young girl afflicted by a mysterious illness (“dyschronia”, from which the novel draws its name). What looks from the outside to be symptoms of a migraine actually brings with it visions of a dark future. Then, one morning, Clapstone wakes up to find that the sea has retreated, like an apocalyptic tsunami in reverse. Why didn’t Sam warn them? What do her visions mean for the future of the town? Read my full review of Dyschronia here.
The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun
In The Disaster Tourist, a trip to the island of Mui is the least profitable offering for a company specialising in vacations to places that have been devastated by climate change and natural disasters. Yona – once one of the company’s top representatives, now facing termination – is charged with posing as a regular holiday-maker on Mui, to see if she can’t figure out what’s lacking. Would a company really fabricate a natural catastrophe to boost sales?
The Breeding Season by Amanda Niehaus
The Breeding Season is a story of all-encompassing grief, intensely poetic and full of natural imagery and metaphor. Amanda Niehaus brings together all kinds of binaries: art and science, grief and hope, birth and death. Elise is a reproductive biologist and researcher who turns to fieldwork to cope with the grief of losing her child. Neihaus is also a biologist, and undertook extensive research into the reproductive biology of northern quolls to write Elise’s story. Read my full review of The Breeding Season here.
Lanny by Max Porter
Lanny is a remarkably short novel, quick to power through and with lots of white space, but it seems to contain multitudes: magic, nature, suspense, and wonder. There are as many interpretations as there are readers. For me, it was about an innocent man harangued and almost hanged by a small town, but maybe you’ll find in it a book about nature, a book about a child’s sense of wonder, a book about parental obligation and fear, a book about a town ghost, a morality tale, an environmental allegory, a hybrid fairytale, a freewheeling fantasy. Read my full review of Lanny here.
The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man And The Sea is an ostensibly simple and deceptively short novel: an old man goes fishing alone, and hooks a massive marlin that drags him far out into the Gulf Stream. But, of course, there’s a lot going on under the surface. This is a story about courage in the face of certain failure, the wisdom that comes with defeat, and the insignificance of man in the vastness of nature. Read my full review of The Old Man And The Sea here.
The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay
The Animals In That Country centres on the outbreak of a highly infections subtype of influenza that threatens the very fabric of society. The story is told through the eyes of Jean, a no-nonsense, foul-mouthed grandmother who works in a remote wildlife park. Jean struggles to keep her alcoholism under control, and feels more affinity for the animals in her care than for the people who visit them. The only thing that tethers her to the routine of life is her granddaughter, Kimberly — a six year old with dreams of opening an animal park of her very own someday. Read my full review of The Animals In That Country here.
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