Landscapes
Christine Lai
‘Landscapes is deftly textured with journal entries, narrative, art history and criticism. What emerges is a hypnotic novel that meditates on loss and violence. A gorgeous and accomplished debut.’
— Electric Literature
‘Lai debuts with an intelligent narrative of an archivist living and working in the English countryside in a near future wracked by climate change… Alongside Penelope’s trauma, thoughtfully developed ekphrases show how violence against women has not only been banalized, but positively coded in the tradition of Western painting. Sebald fans should take note.’
— Publishers Weekly
‘[Landscapes] builds an electric undercurrent of doom. In cool, sinewy prose, this astute and timely novel explores the roles of beauty, art, and passion in a time of survival.’
— Kirkus Reviews
Set in a near-future fraught with ecological collapse, Christine Lai’s mesmerising and prismatic debut novel Landscapes is a brilliant exploration of memory, empathy, preservation, and art as an instrument for recollection and renewal.
In the English countryside—decimated by heat and drought—Penelope archives what remains of an estate’s once notable collection. As she catalogues the library’s contents, she keeps a diary of her final months in the dilapidated country house that has been her home for two decades and a refuge for those who have been displaced by disasters. Out of necessity, Penelope and her partner, Aidan, have sold the house and its scheduled demolition marks the pressing deadline for completing the archive. But with it also comes the impending return of Aidan’s brother, Julian, at whose hands Penelope suffered during a brief but violent relationship twenty-two years before. As Julian’s visit looms, Penelope finds herself unable to suppress the past, clinging to art as a means of understanding, of survival, and of reckoning.
Recalling the works of Rachel Cusk and Kazuo Ishiguro, Landscapes is an elegiac and spellbinding blend of narrative, essay, and diary that reinvents the country-house novel for our age of catastrophe, announcing the arrival of an extraordinarily gifted new writer.
Praise for Landscapes
‘With its careful attention to landscape painters and diary entries leading up to the demolition of the house, this is the ultimate piece of fiction about noticing what’s been overlooked.’
—Los Angeles Times
"There’s [...] something strangely beautiful and comforting about the ways that Penelope and Aidan are responding to their slow apocalypse: by making their world smaller and helping others, and accepting the heartbreaking temporality of all things, even art.’
—LitHub
‘Rich with allusions to paintings and literature, Landscapes is a quiet, deeply impactful exploration of memory and loss, and art in the face of unimaginable crisis.’
—Write or Die Magazine
’This elegiac debut is at once a disturbing glimpse into the ravages of a climate-wrecked world and a cutting examination of violence against women in art, demanding we consider the longlasting consequences of our actions and testifying to the slow, painful work of living after trauma.’
—Booklist
‘Plenty of books exist about what to do with the art of bad men, but changing the channel and walking on the other side of the street no longer cut it. Christine Lai’s debut novel, Landscapes, offers no illusions about or answers to this problem, but it is a fortifying read nonetheless. Instead of delivering a polemic, Landscapes probes the archive of feminist art for new answers, by blending diary entries, close-third-person narration, and criticism.’
– The Believer
‘With so many ideas — biographic musings about Turner, gender politics in Western art, the end of civilization, the psychological aftermath of rape and the archiving of cultural texts — the wonder is that Lai manages to both synthesize the notions into a whole and make the story immersive.’
– Vancouver Sun
‘The story of an archive—discovered in not only what it preserves, but what it leaves out—is compelling, and Landscapes has a lot to say about art, ruins, and beauty.’
—Interview Magazine
About the Author
Christine Lai holds a PhD in English literature from University College London. Landscapes has been longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize (US and Canada) and the CLMP Firecracker Awards for Independently Published Literature. Christine currently lives in Canada.
Paperback ISBN: 9781914391521
Ebook ISBN: 9781914391538
Publication date: March 2025
Formats: Paperback / eBook