“It’s easy to convert people through fear”: The Role of Fear in Silas House’ “Lark Ascending”

Over the past year, I have been participating in a local book club. Even though I have not been able to make all of the events, I have still read the novels, and this year I read some books that I may not have read if it were not for the book club. One of these books was Judy Blume’s Wifey, “an adult novel” that Blume published in the 1970s. As a kid, I read her children’s books, but nothing like Wifey. Another book was Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, a book I had been wanting to read but never got around to doing so until the book club. The final book for this year was Silas House’s Lark Ascending, again a book I had seen around and thought about reading. House’s book, more than the other two, really hit home, especially in this moment.

Lark Ascending is, for lack of a better term, a post-apocalyptic novel. It begins with Lark and his family on a boat in the Atlantic as they flee the United States and seek refuge in Ireland, one of the last countries on the planet accepting refugees. They flee because the United States has collapsed due to the impacts of climate change and to the rise of fundamentalist Christian fascists who have seized power, imposing their beliefs and will on the populace. This latter aspect stand out to me because, as we have seen over the past few years, the…