FICTION
Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids
by Leyna Krow
Penguin Books
Published on January 28, 2025
The Uncertainty of Our Times in “Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids”
The world is unraveling at the seams. We all know it. From the devastating 2024 flooding of the Carolinas to the wildfires in California just this January, climate change is breaking apart our lives and forcing us to make tough decisions about what we will and won’t do in the face of multiplying disasters. Leyna Krow’s stories in Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids explore this moment through near-future sci-fi and struggling characters.
Several of these stories are explicitly interconnected—“Egret,” “RIP Kittitas Bong Squad,” “Nicholas the Bunny,” and “Appendix: Selected Letters from Grandma Jenna” all connect the same network of family members. Three siblings: Ruby, Jace, and Nicholas. Jace leaves to become a climate warrior. Ruby never knows enough about current events to know what’s going on. She eventually decides to bring a child into a world where that decision is very controversial. And Jace’s twin, Nicholas, is betrayed by his brother’s departure, but slowly finds his own role in his power to manifest life. Jenna, their mother, writes letters to her future grandchild that both wonder about the future and dig into the past, wherein her idealist husband struggled to do good in a poisoned world.
All of Krow’s stories, not just those explicitly interconnected, are weighted by the varied reactions to the climate disasters we’re seeing, some in their own ways. From denial to despair to a simple refusal to look to finding strength in neighbors or in love, even the most seemingly unrelated tales explore connection and what we owe to each other in a world that is crumbling.
A community of mothers insists on a blind and intense “SUPPORT” for each other’s endeavors, even when one of them invents a dubious homemade vitamin. A girl falls down a gully and her friend disappears—when they all realize he simply left her there, the family tries to treat the incident like an awkward misunderstanding rather than a profound betrayal. A woman given responsibility that makes her uncomfortable simply decides to walk away.
All of these stories could be layered onto a map of our reactions to climate change. Hopelessness. Simple denial, avoidance, walking away, a refusal to take any of the responsibility onto ourselves. A need to do good, that could be powered by all kinds of things, whether personal pride, solidarity, a bright idealism, or something darker (such as the girl who finds a passion for killing the invasive butterflies in her neighborhood simply because she likes to destroy).
Perhaps the most direct, and most powerful, of these stories is “Outburst,” in which a young scientist discovers that according to her research, a glacier on Mount Rainier will collapse any day, releasing a disastrously sized lahar, or rush of mud and water, into the valley. She tells everyone she knows, but no one wants to hear it. Her mentor is interested only in getting her own proprietary sensors involved. A fellow professor turns out to be using her for emotional support. Locals in town are all waiting for a disaster, but a different one—they’re focused on possible wildfires. Her family only half-listens, thinking it would be too wild to evacuate before anything has happened.
And so all Andi can do is observe. She gets to know the townsfolk. Upset when her parents appear for a visit, she finds herself showing them around. When no one is listening, all she can do is witness, and wait for a disaster she knows is coming. This is a feeling that too many scientists today can likely sympathize with. That so many activists, too, know well. She screams warnings and no one listens. And so she’s filled to the brim with impending doom, doubt, guilt, and anxiety, even as the people around her simply go on obliviously with their everyday lives.
Sinkhole perfectly captures the struggle to face the void we appear to be staring down each day as we plunge further into the climate crisis, and does it all while leaving us with a lasting feeling of hope and promise.
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