Yellow Pine
Yellow Pine’s a contested space: the phrase describes both a poorly-conceived green energy project and the protest camp that pops up to counter its existence. The conflict between the two looms over a couple gripped in midlife crisis in this smart, spiky novel ... Watkins deploys incredible grace and rich humor as she populates this stark landscape with eccentric characters struggling with recovery, a society out of step with humanity, environmental doom, and the boom and bust of tourism ventures ... You may not want to join their daily struggle, but you appreciate it — and deeply enjoy their company ... Watkins skillfully chronicles a world of chosen families and iconoclast women who can’t deny their sentimental hearts.
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A smart, sexy, surprisingly hopeful novel about the world going to hell ... Watkins has never written more confidently or staked so much on her unmistakable voice, which winds through environmental catastrophe, goofy comedy, and sexual obsession ... Watkins knows this desert well. It isn’t merely the setting of Yellow Pine — it’s the very model for its plot. Change is hard to spot here. This isn’t a T.C. Boyle climate novel; movement is rare and constrained in these pages, which have the metabolism of a kangaroo rat — a compliment, I promise. Almost everything interesting happens underground.
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Less emotionally raw than Watkins’s previous book ... I will admit that I loved this novel most when Watkins set aside her exhausting, if justified, litanies long enough to show her characters at their most vulnerable.
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