Dissolution, by Nicholas Binge
Published 2025
Maggie is eighty-three years old and her husband, Stanley, is in a memory care facility called Sunrise because he has dementia. Sometimes he remembers Maggie, and sometimes he doesn’t.
The story opens with Maggie in a strange interview with someone named Hassan who tells her that actually the problem is that Stanley isn’t forgetting things, his memories are being taken from him. Hassan needs some information from Stanley’s mind to help him stop some baddies who are erasing Stanley, and he needs Maggie’s help to get into Stanley’s mind to retrieve the information before it is too late.
The story unfolds in the present and the past, delving into Stanley’s early life for the seeds of his discoveries about time travel via memories. It also chronicles Stanley and Maggie’s life story and their deep love for one another. But as Maggie goes deeper into her journey through Stanley’s mind, it becomes clear that Stanley is hiding things, even from her.
Time travel and memory are also a little mind-bending subjects, and this was a fun ride as well as a sweet love story. The stakes do get raised to “oh no this could affect the world in bad ways if we aren’t careful,” but it does not get to the “and now we’re in a complete dystopia” level that it would if this was a Blake Crouch novel.
That said, if you enjoy Crouch, you will likely enjoy this novel, and it also avoids some of the annoying time travel tropes while making use of some others. It just depends on what annoys you about time travel if you’ve read other books in the genre!
The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben
Published 2015
Written by a German forest manager, this book is designed to evoke wonder and delight around forests and trees. Wohlleben describes trees in extremely anthropomorphic ways which I found overblown or slightly distracting at times, but I also appreciate the technical knowledge he has about tree communication and the ways that trees compete and cooperate.
Overall I found the book delightful, and while I imagine I might have been irritated by the ways the author describes some trees as “street kids” and “immigrants,” as a lay person some of the analogies were helpful.
Trees are pretty amazing, and I appreciate that someone is out there trying to convince people that forests are great and we should allow more forested areas to thrive on their own without our intervention and without trying to make all land “productive” for human purposes (even the language of “productive” and “unproductive” creates a value judgment that isn’t helpful).
Part of being a good steward as a human is caring for the beautiful planet we call home, not simply stripping it for parts, and living more with nature instead of opposed to it, is an interesting topic of much discussion and debate. I loved learning more about networks of trees that make up a forest, how they coexist with other organisms, and how trees work to create a beautiful ecosystem from which we all benefit.
