Because I Must

Back in July, with the publication date of my new novel on the horizon, like a tiny, fragile boat on a big sea, I was already labouring on the next one when I found myself asking the novelist’s existential question: Why am I writing these?

The war in Ukraine was entering its seventeenth month. Canada’s economy and social fabric were showing signs of fraying, with slowing productivity and random stabbings on ­subways. And the weather was getting more erratic and destructive, with deaths resulting from fires and floods.

I had just started reading what some were calling a “non-fiction novel,” Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. I assume the oxymoronic description arose because the book crams lots of facts and science in between plotting and character development. At first I wasn’t enjoying it too...