Rain

The Talbots (The Red Virgin and the Vison of Utopia) set a didactic fictional romance amid the real-life floods that devastated the United Kingdom in 2015. While the scholarly, eco-friendly heart of their effort is in the right place, what’s meant to be an ecological thriller crams in so much data and fact-filled dialogue that it reads like a public service announcement. Londoner Cath is in a strained long-distance relationship with her organic-obsessed girlfriend Mitch, an organizer of a grassroots campaign to protect local marshy bog-land in Yorkshire. The link between the health of the land and the health of its people is direct, as a tree-planting friend of Mitch’s tells Cath: “Saving the planet? I prefer to think of it as saving grandchildren.” Cath and Mitch bicker over eco-friendliness issues, with Cath suggesting her girlfriend simply move out of a flood-hazard zone. “What, move to the top of a hill and buy a boat?” Mitch retorts. “It’s not just one place, it’s global. And it’s about to get a lot worse.” Bryan Talbot’s detailed portraits of Yorkshire’s people and wind-hewn landscape paint a lovely, empathetic picture of a place in danger of destruction. Unfortunately, the story itself is a slog and delves with more emotional intensity into the impacts of pesticides on soil health than into the inner lives of the characters. (Oct.)