Ghost Species

 James Bradley's novel Ghost Species has been on my radar since it was published in 2020, and I finally got around to reading it. The premise is intriguing. In a near future, an eccentric billionaire is bringing species back from extinction -- a kind of extreme rewilding project! But in addition to resurrecting mammoths and aurochs, he is also bringing back a Neanderthal child. (One niggle: the singular of aurochs is aurochs, not auroch -- like ox, I guess?)

The novel follows the child, Eve, and the woman who becomes her mother, Kate, secluded in Tasmania, as the world begins to disintegrate around them, until the final catastrophic 'Melt' brings about the end of society as we know it. Ghost Species makes for uncomfortable reading, as this future apocalypse is all too plausible (though I did find it hard to believe that container ships would still be sailing after the total breakdown of global civilisation). It's interesting that the novel was written before at least one cataclysm hit the planet in the form of the covid pandemic -- it must have been spooky for Bradley to see some of his predictions unfold. And it was particularly good to read this book just after Wilding (which reinforced the view that our eccentric billionaire was barking up the wrong tree in trying to preserve single species rather than habitat). Ultimately the conclusion is unavoidable: we all depend on each other.