The Inland Sea

October 12, 2020
Australian writer Watts punctuates her eloquent debut with deep-seated anxiety about climate change. For the most part, the story follows a young woman’s downward spiral after she graduates from college and faces a bleak future. The unnamed protagonist finds work as an operator at a call center connecting those in need to appropriate organizations. The rote job turns daunting when calls suddenly pour in, saturating her in horrific reports of floods, fires, and violence. Meanwhile, her personal life remains chaotic as she continues her relationship with an emotionally abusive ex, and indulges in heavy drinking along with nightly hookups, of which she observes, “I wanted to be undone. I wasn’t interested in protecting myself.” Snapshots of her childhood reveal an angry father and her parents’ messy divorce, and the journal entries of real-life 19th-century explorer John Oxley, the narrator’s great-great-great-grandfather, find their way into the story. Oxley’s search for Australia’s inland sea is mirrored in the narrator’s bleak outlook on the future (“The sea need only rise a few meters for... the rock and sand and red gibber plains to become submerged once more”). While the narrative moves haphazardly, the prose is consistently rich and loaded with imagery. Watts’s bold, unconventional outing makes for a distinctive entry into the climate fiction genre. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners.

November 1, 2020
An unnamed protagonist watches Australia burn as her body burns along with it. With an almost bored detachment, a recent college graduate and aspiring writer working at a Triple Zero call center (Australia's version of 911) lists the crises she transfers to emergency agencies: "An old man with chest pains...a woman hiding from her ex-boyfriend under the bed, and a mother whose baby had turned blue." This aura of detachment doesn't mean the narrator is callous but instead points to a central tension running through the novel: the narrator's desire to be separate from a body that feels too much. Watts plays with this idea of dissociation by creating a heroine who writes to the reader from a future vantage point without ever revealing her own name (and giving pseudonyms to everyone in her life). Nevertheless, the reader is invited to witness the intimate moment when the blood clots slide down the narrator's leg in the shower after she has an abortion. This abortion and the man who impregnated her usher in a series of events that violently echo Australia's burning landscape. The narrator continuously endangers her body through unprotected sex with strangers, overindulgence in alcohol, and ill-advised swims in riptides; meanwhile, her mind seems to be playing catch-up: "I became aware of a sound that I discovered was being issued from me. A howl." People around her experience disasters, and she keeps herself outside. She goes through trauma, and she doesn't know she's the one screaming. Magnificently uncomfortable.

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November 1, 2020
This is a coming-of-age novel fit for the crippling uncertainty of twenty-first-century young adulthood. Our unnamed narrator lives in Sydney, has just graduated with a degree in Australian literature, and works as an emergency dispatch operator to pay rent. She scoffs at any concern that the job might be taking an emotional toll. Habitually self-destructive, she drinks herself to sleep, pursues lots of unprotected sex, and has yet to work through the emotional fallout of a year-ago abortion. All of her personal strife is set against the struggles she's inherited from her family and the earth: an abusive father, a burning planet, rising seas. The narrator is a descendant of an early Australian explorer who believed there to be an expansive body of water at the center of the dry Australian continent. Watts uses this connection throughout the story to convey the narrator's hope and skepticism that a fruitful and contented life is possible. The powerful metaphors, relatable negotiation for a satisfying livelihood, and ethereal setting make Watts' debut a can't-miss.

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