I picked up The Thinning, the latest novel from Australian novelist and nature writer Inga Simpson, as a Summer read when it was first released late in 2024. Described as by publisher Hachette Australia as both modern and contemporary fiction and as thriller/suspense, The Thinning was longlisted for the Stella PrizeFootnote ¹ in 2025. Judges noted it is “an electric and melancholy tale, disturbingly believable but ultimately – and surprisingly – hopeful.” (Stella Prize, 2025, n.p.). Ratings on Goodreads (goodreads.com) suggest it works as young adult fiction, given narrator and main character Fin Kelvin’s voice, apparent age and positionality. My read is that Simpson’s ability to attune to the interconnected relationships of a place through her senses, expressed through Fin’s voice, make for multi-layered genre-bending storytelling that draws the reader deeper with each read.

I had been inspired to read The Thinning after being part of a nature writing workshop with IngaFootnote ² and listening to her speak during a conference keynoteFootnote ³ about the experiences that had shaped her as a writer. I came away with the sense that relating with and as “nature” is part of who she is, perhaps even ontologically woven into her bones. Simpson is known for exploring human relationships with place through her fiction and non-fiction and The Thinning is no exception. I was captivated from the first page, with the opening paragraph opening my senses and heightening my awareness, simultaneously pulling me into my body and drawing me into narrator Fin Kelvin’s world.

From here, The Thinning unfolds and emerges through a plotline that on the surface seems deceptively simple. Simpson uses flashbacks to flesh out the storyline that led to Fin and her mother Dianella being on the run, situating the novel within the realms of speculative fiction by “reaching back before that time and looking forward” (Ferguson et al., Reference Ferguson, Tytler, White and Oliver2025, p. 397). Western notions of time are disturbed with the storyline set not in the future or past, but in the present. Time is further disrupted as we are not given a date or a year in which the storyline is set. All we know is that the event we are drawn into unfolds through a single cycle, from daylight, through phases of twilight, into astronomical dawn, and then night.

Fin is on the run from a world that has become unliveable, living off the grid in the Warrumbungles, on GamilaraayFootnote ⁴ Country with Dianella and a band of ‘outliers’ who are “always on amber alert and always ready to run” (Hachette Australia, Reference Australia2024, n.p.). As the promotional blurb explains,

The pace shifts and changes throughout to create a page turner in true thriller style, interspersed with moments of awe and wonder as Fin reads Gamilaraay Country and kin through her senses. Her affective descriptions of Country have the effect of slowing things down, shifting time, begging me to pay attention. It feels reflective of the fast-paced lifestyles we live in these Anthropocene times: move too fast and you miss the presence, the nuance, of nature and the more-than-human world. If you do not pay attention, you are left wondering what’s going on, what has happened and what’s next. The dissonance is further heightened by Fin’s seemingly heightened capacity for sensory attunement to the multispecies world, which is juxtaposed by the lack of this capacity in the “incomplete” Terry. Fin explains that ‘incompletes’ are a generation of humans who were born with bodies that have evolved to suit a primarily screen-based, technological way of life.

Witnessing her mothers’ grief and anger in response to changes to Sky Country that have impacted her astrophotography work, and sharing what she has learnt from Uncle Nate, Fin speaks to the cultural impacts of climate change. She describes what it means to lose things we take for granted, including those that anchor cultural knowledge. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of The Thinning is the way extinction (“the thinning”) is spoken about. The novel is set in a time when Koalas are extinct. There has been some kind of unnamed disaster on the Moon from a mining accident that has impacted the rhythms and cycles of Earth. These points are almost glossed over, reported on as matters of fact, by Fin. It reminds me that we rarely know what is happening outside our immediate consciousness, or the impacts of our actions at scale. The slow burn of climate change might be making us immune to what is occurring, where we no longer question what we are losing as it happens.

Simpson writes place in a way that brings Country to the foreground as more than a setting or location for the plot line. Through this she brings nature alive as a living, breathing being which speaks through Fin, if the reader is willing to listen. Fin’s ability to attune with place certainly resonates for me, and I wonder about the impact of technology on our ability to connect with each other, and the more-than-human world. It is not a stretch to imagine a time when “incompletes” might walk among us. These are simply humans who are so attached to their online life that their eyes have evolved to be suited to screens rather than non-screen seeing, in a time when “normal people” meet online rather than face to face. By the end I am left wondering what else I might have missed, or ignored, and what else has been ravaged by humans and climate change that I cannot see.

While writing this review, I read a news report (Courty, Reference Courty2025) about NASA’s plans to fast track a plan to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030, with the aim of providing light and warmth to enable humans to live there during the two weeks of darkness experienced each month. I wonder whether Simpson has predicted the future or whether we are already living The Thinning. At times I cannot tell where the truth begins and ends and find myself Googling to fact check. Like good climate fiction, The Thinning blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction just enough to make me believe that what I am reading is real. I can imagine myself as the characters, they became known to me, and I can see myself in them.

While the open-ended, hopeful ending left me wanting, it also left me with the sense that if you are willing to allow the discomfort that surfaces when you read a little more deeply, The Thinning offers something more than a typical page-turning thriller. It works as a beautifully written example of contemporary climate fiction, bringing attention to “the human-induced and xeno-induced catastrophes of climate change and, consequently, its narrative on what life on Earth has and may become” (Ferguson et al., Reference Ferguson, Tytler, White and Oliver2025, p. 398). In The Thinning, these impacts are expanded beyond Earth to encompass Sky Country, which brings attention to unseen, and possibly unimaginable, impacts of humanity’s growing reliance on technology.

The invitation is to take the time to be with the storyline, the plot, the characters and Country, as evoked through Simpson’s masterful storytelling. It will not necessarily give you answers, but it will likely open something within you if you are willing. Perhaps it will invite you to bathe in the language of Country as seen through Fin’s eyes. Perhaps it will open a conversation about the human impacts of climate change beyond what we can imagine through human eyes. Perhaps it will invite you back in for another, deeper read, as it did me. These possibilities elevate The Thinning to highly recommended reading for climate change and environmental educators and students alike.