Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins review – messy portrait of protest subculture

Watkins should have been the ideal writer for this sympathetic take on new age spirituality and desert eco-activism – but the results are confusing Rose, the protagonist of Claire Vaye Watkins’s latest novel, has retreated from the world to live in Nothingness Flats, a cinder-block cabin in the Nevada desert. On indefinite leave from her job at an environmental organisation, Rose works on her Al-Anon recovery, goes hiking and joins protests against the Yellow Pine of the title: a solar array ...

By Sandra Newman