Melt

Melt tells the story of an office worker who loses his wife, job and mind to the slow burn of climate change. The novel, which is a work of literary fiction, explores the negative effects of climate change on mental health and the ways the climate crisis directly and indirectly—from suicide to economic systems—impacts our psychological well-being. After the protagonist’s wife, Sunflower, mysteriously leaves him with no trace, his job at Replica Industries Pacific is all he has left. While going through the motions, he files a missing person’s report with the police to no avail, navigates a company-wide audit led by the ascetic auditors, attempts to move on by attending a desert-based corporate retreat, learns about a whistleblower damaging Replica’s reputation, and discovers an artificial intelligence (AI) in the loins of the company’s office tower, a surreal character who promises to help him locate Sunflower. Throughout the protagonist’s journey, brief moments of communication with Sunflower reveal how deeply unhappy she was with the state of her life and the world. In an act of desperation and rebellion, Sunflower takes her own life; her act is knowingly captured on camera which is seen by the protagonist on a live-stream; the video of her final moments goes viral—all in an effort to bring awareness to the planet’s destruction. The protagonist is at once mistaken for the corporate whistleblower and arrested for an unspecified corporate crime. Once in prison, the protagonist grieves the loss of his wife and reflects on their marriage; this time spent outside of “the work” finally gives him a chance to heal. Melt explores the interconnectedness of capitalism and the climate crisis through a first-person human perspective as the novel meanders through a maximalist plot and compassionate characters, all the while, driven by a celebration of language, a light satirical sensibility, and, ultimately, a universal search for meaning in the new millennium.Arts, Faculty ofGraduat