The Stream

In the tradition of Silent Spring, the story of an industrial park's environmental impact follows the welcome announcement of new jobs in a depressed rural community and a farmer's witness to the victimization of a nearby stream's animal life. A first novel by the author of Flyfishing for Trout. 10,000 first printing.

The creatures of a pristine valley stream struggle against the changes wrought by the construction of an industrial park in Clarke's debut novel, which documents the deterioration of a rural ecosystem in poignant detail. After a ponderous opening that describes the forces of nature in wooden prose, Clarke hits his stride as he interweaves the story of the stream's denizens with the story of the machinations behind, and protests against, the park's development. The human characters are forgettable stereotypes, ranging from a corporate activist trying to save the stream to the various executives of Cogent Electronics, the British firm underwriting the industrial project. But the dilemma of the various animals and insects is described in loving, painstaking detail, as Clarke chronicles the demise of the local trout and salmon, then works his way down to the plight faced by mayflies as their environment is overrun with chokeweed and silt. As a work of fiction, Clarke's book is deeply flawed: the animal passages are repetitious, and the human characters severely underdeveloped. But as a naturalistic treatise, this narrative works because it brings home the interdependence of the various animals and their helplessness as their world is altered and they are destroyed. The novelistic blemishes may put off mainstream readers, but the book should find admirers among fans of environmental fiction.
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In concise, vivid chapters that alternate between the perspectives of animals and humans, first-time novelist Clarke dramatizes the life and death of a stream flowing through the English countryside over a five-year period during which environmentalists fail to stop the building of an industrial park and a drought exacerbates the deleterious changes development brings. He offers a fish's-eye view by focusing on a trout's attempt to live the life "the law that governed all things" decreed that he should live even as the once clean and cool stream turns warm and sluggish, thickened by silt and choke-weed and poisoned with chemical runoff. An astute, knowledgeable naturalist, Clarke also imagines the experiences of a swan, an otter, a heron, and even a mayfly. Equally sensitive to human nature, he portrays a father and son at odds over industrial agricultural methods, environmentalists and businessmen, a politician, and a journalist. The winner of Britain's BP Natural World Book Prize, Clarke's powerfully evocative tale traces the intricate choreography of life and reveals how easily it can be disrupted. Donna Seaman
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