Daisy Hildyard

Emergency Daisy Hildyard

For readers of Rachel Cusk and Jenny Odell, a lyrical work of autofiction that explores the dissolution of boundaries between the self and our earth as we head towards catastrophe.

Our narrator is stuck at home alone under lockdown, where she remembers her 1990s childhood in rural Yorkshire. She recalls a kestrel hunt, helping a farmer save a renegade bull, and days playing with her best friend, Clare. In her village, neighbors argue, keep secrets, care for one another, and try to hold down jobs. Fox cubs fight in the woods, plants compete for space, a quarry slowly falls apart, and we see a three-legged deer who likes cake. These local phenomena interconnect and spread out from China to Nicaragua as pesticides circulate, money flows around the planet, and bodies feel the force of distant power.

A story of remote violence and a work of praise for a persistently lively world. Brilliantly written, surprising, evocative and unsettling, Daisy Hildyard's Emergency reinvents the pastoral novel for the climate change era.