Mobility

Mobility ~ Lydia Kiesling

The year is 1998, the End of History. The Soviet Union is dissolved, the Cold War is over, and Bunny Glenn is an American teenager in Azerbaijan with her Foreign Service family. Through Bunny’s eyes we watch global interests flock to the former Soviet Union during the rush for Caspian oil and pipeline access, hear rumbles of the expansion of the American security state and the buildup to the War on Terror. We follow Bunny from adolescence to middle age—from Azerbaijan to America—as the entwined idols of capitalism and ambition lead her to a career in the oil industry, and eventually back to the scene of her youth, where familiar figures reappear in an era of political and climate breakdown. (From the author’s website)

Bunny is an interesting character. She’s liberal, believes in global warming and its disastrous consequences, but ends up working for a family owned oil company in Texas. Her job turns out to be whitewashing the energy industry, and she often finds herself defending the company, explaining that they are working toward getting into renewable energy. She is full of rationalizations. Yes, fossil fuels are destroying our planet in so many ways, but where would she rather people give birth: in a hospital equipped with petroleum-powered machines, or outside in a shed? 

Bunny is called to task by her brother’s partner, Sophie, who is an environmental journalist, and rejects Bunny’s defenses of fossil fuels as a necessary evil. Sophie isn’t buying it, but understands at the same time that the oil industry is far too large and entrenched in every aspect of our lives. I wanted to like Bunny, and she was somewhat sympathetic sometimes, I could understand why she felt the way she felt and so on, but she personified hypocrisy too often, a discomforting mirror for those of us with smart phones who still believe in human rights.

Mobility follows Bunny through her life at different periods, beginning when she is a teenager in Azerbaijan, and jumping forward in increments to her life in Texas, where she lives with her newly divorced mother, then to her life on her own, and her own marriage, as well as the family dynamics between her, her parents, and her brothers.

More than Bunny’s story, though, Mobility is about the oil industry and the idea of “hyperobjects”, objects so large that they cannot be escaped. Like the oil industry, which stretches out and affects us in so many ways beyond just the gas and oil that we use to fuel our cars. Like climate change, which we struggle to contain, all while living our hypocritical lives and barreling toward our own destruction. Recommended.