Amy Kaler's ​Half-Light: Westbound on a Hot Planet

Reviewed by Kimberley Gilmour

(University of Alberta Press, 2024)

Amy Kaler realizes that she is aging. She writes from this perspective as she compares and contrasts herself to failed settlements and ghost towns that unfold throughout her journey across Alberta. Temperatures change, alacrity diminishes; stalemate seems to be the conclusion to each of her chapters. She writes what she views and she understands what she feels. Kaler is a quiet creative non-fiction writer, and the reader follows along as if one is on the same trail with her. She remarks, "And as for me, just like everyone else who once had a history or a dream of these now-empty fields, I've moved on." The sorrow and loss of self permeates the entire work as Kaler sketches the lost flora, fauna, and vitality of the outskirts of Edmonton and Calgary.

All the abandoned towns that are not quite ghost towns yet have a closed church, a restaurant, and a general store. Kaler compares these places to their historical prime and paints a geography of pain. Moreover, she contemplates her years of exercise and jogging. It's all come to a halt, and she feels the demise of time. Aches and pains arise, and wrinkles too; and these are like the extinct functions of failed development. What used to be powerful and pretty is now reduced to some basic weeds and a minute population.
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The first image that comes to mind, for me, is tumbleweed and a ghastly whistling wind. Kaler explains the diagnosis:

​While I wait for the end of the world, I read a lot about it...Among these emotions is solastalgia—a new concept for me. Solastalgia names the feelings of distress and grief caused by living through harmful changes to the environment. Solastalgia is being homesick...

Town by town, empty spaces unravel as she notes the devastation of abandoned settlements. She laments the fact that colonization has its dire and deadly consequences. There are no checks and balances because people have moved on, politics has gone quiet, and fear is gurgling upwards.

This creative non-fiction book is a journey through the otherworlds, the outskirts, the places of abandoned and introduced mullein, or lonely milkweed and the odd moth. It is not a treasure trove of a wild garden of sunflowers, wild roses, ferns, and mixed-up weeds. Unfortunately, there are no caretakers for these lands and eerie landmarks.
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The text reads like an existential outlet of angst and disappointment. Kaler draws the reader into an unfolding pattern of people and land. Yes, as meat consumption doubles since the 1960's, the coronavirus emerges, and lands stay desolate, it is Amy Kaler's Half-Light that challenges the reader into ecology, ecofeminism, and some little thread of much-needed immediate virtue.

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​Kimberley Gilmour is a freelance writer who is published in The Antigonish Review, ARIEL, and The Windsor Star. She is currently reviewing poems by Eva H.D. and Holly by Stephen King. She has a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Philosophy and Women‘s Studies from Trent University. She also has a B.Ed and a B.A. in English Literature.