Clade

A provocative, urgent novel about time, family, and how a changing planet might change our lives, from James Bradley, acclaimed author of The Resurrectionist and editor of The Penguin Book of the Ocean. Compelling, challenging, and resilient, over ten beautifully contained chapters, Clade canvasses three generations from the very near future to late this century.

Central to the novel is the family of Adam, a scientist, and his wife Ellie, an artist. Clade opens with them wanting a child, and Adam is in a quandary about the wisdom of this. Their daughter proves to be an elusive little girl and then a troubled teenager, and by now, cracks have appeared in her parents' marriage. Their grandson is, in turn, a troubled boy, but when his character reappears as an adult, he's an astronomer, one set to discover something astounding in the universe.

With great skill, James Bradley shifts us subtly forward through the decades, through disasters and plagues, miraculous small moments, and acts of great courage. Elegant, evocative, understated, and thought-provoking, it is the work of a writer in command of the major themes of our time.

Clade opens up to become that rarest of novels—one that stares down its harrowing beginning to find a sense of peace and even of wonder, while being true to itself. All the way through, the prose is achingly beautiful. Bradley's a magnificent writer, and it's all on display here—sentences and images float, poetic and sharp as crystal. - The Saturday Paper

James Bradley's lithe and inventive novels defiantly resist the present. Clade triumphs because Bradley renders his characters graspable and prioritises the human touch. It is impossible not to be swept along by the sheer pace of the narrative. There is a palpable sense of urgency and consequence that is conveyed subtly, without any heavy-handed didacticism or sententiousness. - Malcolm Forbes, The Australian

Before it is about anything else, Clade is about family. There's a real Dickensian sweep to both its structure and its passionate despair about humanity's dearth of improvement or compassion. Complex and beautifully paced, Clade is the first great novel of climate change. So well does it predict our possible future, it is unlikely to be the last. - James Tierney, Kill Your Darlings

A melodic, intense rendering... sharp, inventive, and ultimately hopeful. - Herald Sun

Bradley's attitude is sanguine. Time is long and the universe is vast—while the novel deals throughout in very familiar human emotions, it sets them finally in a thought-provokingly wider perspective. - Katharine England, The Advertiser (Adelaide)

Provocative... Haunting. - John Affleck, Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin

A compelling story of the triumph of hope over devastation... Clade is a visionary book. - Elaine Fry, West Australian

A remarkable and important novel. - Surf Coast Times

In these relentless, brilliantly imagined apprehensions, Clade's foretellings movingly bind the reader to the lives we all-too-human spirits live—and may live. This is the unstinting dreaming and devoted craft-work of a deeply serious, marvellously accomplished artist taking on the absolutely essential. - Thomas Farber, author of Brief Nudity, On Water, and The Beholder

A beautifully written meditation on climate collapse, concentrating on three generations of an Australian family. Bradley skilfully evokes the particularity of lived experience, and the novel is full of vivid little moments, although its real triumph is in setting these in their larger context—a world wrecked by storms and floods, changes in vegetation, and the collapse of bird and bee populations. Bradley's short, intense novel is as much a hymn to hope as it is a warning. - The Advertiser (Adelaide)