Discuss the novel's first lines. How do mass extinctions shape the characters and plot? What are the similarities and differences between Franny's world and our own? Would you describe this novel as dystopian?

Discuss the novel's first lines: "The animals are dying. Soon we will be alone here." How does the disappearance of wildlife in mass extinctions shape the characters and plot? What are the similarities and differences between Franny's world and our own? Would you describe this novel as dystopian? Why or why not?

I thought Franny’s world and our world have let things go too long, suffering the loss of life. I didn’t find the novel dystopian because our reality is much worse and will only become harder to endure.

I like how it pointed out that things are not likely to end with a bang, but with a whimper. Because things die off gradually and at the edges of what humans experience directly, especially as the very urbanization that is responsible for a lot of that death restricts how much of the world people notice, people just shrug and go on burning fossil fuels, using and discarding plastic, de-foresting larger and larger areas. And like lobsters in boiling pots, they just acclimatize themselves to an increasingly poisoned environment.

I agree with elizabethg that things have been let to go too far. Extinctions happen all the time in our current reality so this is at most a near future.

The scary part here is not that this book is dystopian, but that it isn't. This could be our future. Most of us might not live long enough to see it, but future generations will if we humans continue to believe that our needs and wants are more important than that of the life that surrounds us.