Briefly Very Beautiful

In a world past the brink of apocalypse, Cass is raising her three children in The City on her own. Her husband Nathaniel is a medic in a war in a foreign land, leaving her alone in a world where the air her children are breathing keeps getting heavier with pollution every day. Searching for refuge, Cass decides to start the journey north, hoping to find a new home with her husband’s family in which her children can know safety.

Roz Dineen not only gives us a powerful story of a mother’s love and bravery in pursuit of a better home for her three children, but also captures the deeply unsettling reality of living in a world broken by the climate crisis.

Serving as an allegory for Mother Earth herself, we witness with startling clarity Cass’s unravelling relationships as she struggles against forces that seek to position and use her in ways that suit their own desires. Through the narrative of this novel, Dineen is illuminating how (the collective) man’s quest for himself comes at the cost of the very ecosystem that keeps him alive; a theme that is explored through how women, and our earth, create, do and serve – yet man (yet humanity) takes, manipulates and does not serve anyone but himself, until the very last minute when he does not have another choice.

Roz Dineen is doing more than writing a book. She is holding up a mirror – and we all must ask ourselves if we are willing to see the stark reality glaring loudly back at us.