OUT now
with Picador Australia
“Masterful… gleaming speculative fiction with a core of humanism and hope.” – ABR
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Two estranged sisters reconnect in the aftermath of ecological and social collapse.
They drift in their sleep, waiting for something. The end of the world, or another escape. But the world is still here. There’s no escaping it.
Jude’s life has been about survival. She works on rebuilding – fixes roofs, trucks supplies, transports refugees. Tries to stay free from attachments and obligations.
But Jude won’t talk about her past. Or her sister Celeste, lost in the tragic failure of a space station that was supposed to save her, and the other ultra-rich, from the wreckage of a dying world.
When an escape pod falls from the sky, its passenger near death, Jude knows her anonymous existence can’t continue. As the fragile peace of her community is put at risk, Jude must re-examine the terms of her survival – and her exile.
Salvage is a gripping novel of literary speculative fiction that asks: what does it mean to care for each other, after the end of the world?
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PRAISE FOR SALVAGE:
“Salvage is an incredible novel of great imagination and prescience… Jennifer Mills is the real deal: an author who never loses sight of what it means to be human, even when writing a speculative future so familiar it seems inevitable. I loved it.”
“Heartbreaking, tender, hopeful and tough… Jennifer Mills is one of Australia’s best writers. No one does speculative fiction as poetically or tenderly or compassionately as she does. ”
“Urgent, beautiful and profoundly compassionate. Salvage is necessary reading.”
“Masterful… gleaming speculative fiction with a core of humanism and hope.
Mills’s vision is a deeply empathetic one. It is animated by a sense of possibility… In her thrilling, urgent novel, Mills offers a superb contribution to the ‘fiction of resistance.’”
“Structurally exciting and intellectually stimulating, Mills melds literary and speculative fiction to create a work that is reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin in its focus on character and community over the political and environmental catalysts of collapse. Salvage presents readers with a much-needed provocation towards hope.”
– InDaily
“Every new novel from Jennifer Mills is a fascinating puzzle, gorgeously rendered and emotionally rich…
[Salvage is] beautiful and devastating, heartbreaking and life affirming.”
“Mesmerising… It’s a beautifully structured novel, complex but never messy, and speaks in urgent tones to our contemporary moment.”
“Jennifer Mills is one of Australia’s most innovative writers… In Salvage, she finds a new way to write Australian dystopia… written with a deep, critical understanding of structures, economies and politics, testing out solutions that are about social revolution rather than technological breakthroughs.
A deeply compassionate novel, fierce in its love for the Earth and staunch in its defence.”
“Mills’ fiction continually returns to hauntings; her works explore how spectres from the past are eternally resurrecting in the present.
Mills … has created space for deeper contemplation, an examination of what it feels like to exist in this world, using the broader post-apocalypse as the catalyst for what haunts these characters: the need for escape, existential fear, the fluidity of self in volatile times… These are bold and weighty themes that Mills carries and develops over a sequence of events that, like ecological decline, occur in gradual, almost imperceptible shifts.”
– The Age/Sydney Morning Herald
“a piece of powerful dystopian fiction, examining a potential future where global warming has been left unchecked, and the ultra-rich use technology to try and escape the problems rather than solve them…
This book is an exciting read… the journey is more than worth it.”
“From a climate fiction perspective, Salvage is up there with the best of the recent crop of novels. Mills is clear-eyed about the challenges facing the globe but treats the changing climate as something humans are going to have to (and will) deal with. She is particularly interested in the impacts of wealth disparity but asks the very pertinent question of whether money, in the end, is going to help. For Mills the answer lies in community, in people helping each other even when, possibly, they don’t have to. It is a positive spin on an existential challenge and dealt with through poetically rendered fiction and the life and relationships of a complex, flawed protagonist.”
“Salvage is less the work of a fantastical imagination and more one of extrapolation. Droughts, societal collapse, famines, floods – all the ingredients of the kind of apocalypse we’re slowly experiencing in the real world are rendered in rich, contemplative, literary prose.
Mills eschews traditional formats of dystopian storytelling in favour of exploring compassionate alternatives to existence in hardship… Her world-building is deep and grounded, delicately threading the numerous characters and their strands into a meaningful, memorable conclusion.”
– The Australian