Strange ideas take root in this ambitious story about our climate crisis

The Age

30-07-2025

FICTION
Arborescence
Rhett Davis
Hachette, $32.99
We're familiar with the idea that planting a tree is a gesture of hope, a way of helping to heal the Earth. But what about taking root and becoming trees ourselves?
The characters in Victorian writer Rhett Davis' new novel Arborescence feel both overwhelmed and underwhelmed by life in what is recognisably a version of urban Australia. Their planet has been ravaged by humanity's overconsumption. Their workplaces are being transformed by 'alternative intelligences'. Someone has spray-painted 'THERE IS NO HOPE' on a train station wall.
But something extraordinary is happening. In forests and fields, on roads and along waterways, people are turning into trees – by choice. The book's title was our first hint that this was going to happen; arborescence means 'becoming tree-like'.
But why is this happening? Is this a cult? Performance art? A protest against modern existence? A resignation to grief and helplessness? Or is this metamorphosis a way of healing, a statement of solidarity with the Earth?
Those who read Davis' quirkily dystopian 2022 debut Hovering may be hearing an echo here. In Hovering, as houses were transplanted, roads re-routed and humans altered by online over-stimulation, one character read a book by an author arguing that in a world of chaos and uncertainty, the best response was to be as quiet as plants. In Arborescence, Davis takes this idea and runs with it.
Caelyn and Bren are the novel's main characters. They've been in a relationship for four years. They own a cat. They have families and a circle of friends, but there's something robotic about these interactions. What if, Caelyn asks early on, there's no humanity left in humanity?
Bren, the novel's first-person narrator, works for a company he knows little about. Even after years of employment he's never actually met another human employee. He's assigned various tasks by 'the Queue' – writing, editing, creating images – but doesn't know why these things must be done or who they're for.