It's just such an odd book.
That's the only way I can describe it. I didn't buy the book because it changed my life or is an especially good book (I think the whole thing could do with a trim down and a going over by a more critical editor), but the oddness of the book has stuck with me.
It's a non-fiction book providing advice for "downshifters", which are sort of cousins to preppers, I guess. If your idea of surviving the potential(/inevitable?) collapse of society is less "build a defensible bunker and fill it with a lifetime supply of tinned beans and evaporated milk" and more "plant a big productive garden, ride a bike to save fuel, and raise chickens", then this book may be just what you're looking for, as it's chock full of advice for using permaculture principles and techniques to start a small farm in your backyard.
But, and here's the kicker, in the second chapter of this book it briefly switches to a fable. Or, perhaps, solarpunk-esque speculative short story.
Holmgren tells the story of several fictional families living in a fictional suburban street after peak oil makes our current, highly consumption-driven way of life prohibitive. Over the course of decades, the street changes to become more of a village community and the residents of the houses become more resilient in a post-mass production world.
I want to call it "post-grid". In the middle of a book giving you advice about how to live more "off-grid", this work of fiction drops us into a future where the grid isn't available.
The co-parent of permaculture (and the one largely responsible for moving permaculture from a theory about productive gardening to a philosophy of life) clearly had a vision of the world he wanted to see, and then created a how-to manual for living in that world that provides practical advice for today's world.
And he's crammed so much into it. It really ought to be a smaller format with multiple volumes, but the thing is the size of a 1980s telephone book. It's like Holmgren wasn't willing to take chances on this future and made sure one book contained as much as possible.
There's something almost post-modern about it. I have a strange desire to send my copy back in time to Georges Perec and see what he does with it.
And maybe that's what haunts me the most about it – that little tickle that there's a story this book almost told that's nestled inside it somehow.
Perec would have had a field day.
