Interview with Carol Chiovatto about ‘Inexplicable Tree’ – 07/30/2023 – Darwin and God

As I said some time ago in my weekly column in this Sheet, I was lucky enough to be entertained and moved in equal measure by reading “Inexplicable Tree”. The novel by Brazilian writer Carol Chiovatto unites science and fantasy to talk about the traumas of the pandemic, the threats to Brazilian biodiversity — and, above all, courage and hope.

I exchanged a few messages with her about the themes of the book and was able to reproduce very little of her interesting responses in the limited space of the column. That’s why I take advantage of the blog to publish our brief chat in full. Check it out below.

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Darwin and God – I was very curious to know what led you to include scientific themes in the novel, something I really wasn’t expecting and it was a pleasant surprise. I saw the references to primatologist Frans de Waal and his scientist friend in the book’s credits. Did the snap to follow this line come from them or are sources consulted after the plot idea was already in your head?

Carol Chiovatto – At first, what made me choose the scientific theme was the desire to write another urban fantasy, but one that didn’t look like “However Witch”, my first book. As the latter adopts the point of view that all religions are true, I thought that a secular and scientific approach in “Inexplicable Tree” would help distance the two narratives.

Another factor that led me to work on the subject was that we were living in an anti-science government at the time, including huge budget cuts in the areas of research and education, and we reaped the rotten fruits of that right away in the pandemic. At the time, I was finishing my Ph. D., and it hit me really, really hard. The neglect, the mockery of the rulers.

In addition, my friend Natália Couto Azevedo is an incredible scientist, a veterinarian specializing in Neotropical primates, and my husband has been researching animal representation in the literature, and with that I have access to wonderful discussions about the Anthropocene [uma época geológica marcada pela influência humana], environment, animal intelligence. So this set of elements was directing my readings and my approach in the book. I thought it would be very current, given what we were going through, and at the same time very different in terms of creating the form of magic in a fantasy universe.

Frans de Waal was a stroke of luck: publishing house Zahar released a book by him when I was revising mine, and I asked the publisher to send me a copy. I devoured every page and adjusted the discussions on the topic in my narrative based on his research. It was very enriching.

Within the logic of your fictional world, what seems to me is that your text leaves things right on the razor’s edge between science and “magic”, whatever that is, without necessarily opting for either side as explanation. How do you see the balance between the two things in the narratives of those who write fantasy (and even science fiction, which is also part of your production)?

I have a bit of a tantrum with these great literary oppositions: magic and science, nature and culture. This directs our daily thinking a lot, it makes it seem that there is a confrontation, that it is kill or be killed, as if we humans were not part of a great ecosystem. We see ourselves separated from the world.

In unusual literature, especially in science fiction and fantasy, it is very common to build narratives about human beings against nature, which tends to be exacerbated when there is some form of magic involved. After all, the supernatural in these forms of literature makes it possible to explore, to the last consequences, things that we observe in our own world, with some distance, because magic does not exist the way I put it in the book.

At the same time, for a long time fantastic literature was seen only as escapist. While I don’t deny the value of escapism (everyone has a right to want to escape the world from time to time), I find that a very simplistic view. Fantastic literature has a lot of potential to highlight issues that are very close to us, perhaps too close and, therefore, painful. I wanted to place science there, not as an opposite, but as a complement. There are things we know how to explain. There are others who don’t, at least not yet. For scientists, the result matters, but the search is the biggest part of researchers’ lives.

And some answers we won’t find. In the old days, magic came in to meet this need for explanations. But in contemporary times, we have seen science being treated with growing distrust, discourses that seek to discredit scientists to help people in the spheres of power to exploit other humans, animals, the planet, in a destructive way for which there will be no return. .

A whole anti-science atmosphere was built that fueled a division, in which some people prefer to believe in sourceless currents in messaging applications than in a person who has been studying a topic for twenty years. One of the factors that allows this is the idea of ​​science as something inaccessible. It doesn’t have to be. And I think that literature has the power to change that view.

I did this in both my sci-fi, “Sentient Level 5”, and “Unexplained Tree”. In both books, I show the negative sides of science, which we are used to through various narratives scattered in the audiovisual, but I counterbalance this reading with the positive aspects of science, which are countless, significant and deserve more visibility. Most of the time, when science is a villain, it comes from pressure from powerful people who don’t listen to scientists. I thought it would be an interesting fit with our current setting and the form of magic I chose.

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I won’t give away any more “spoilers” of the book here, but I just wanted to add that the climax of the novel is one of the most poetic and powerful representations of what it means for an ecosystem to exist, forged in the deep connections between the most different ways of life. I recommend reading.