Grief
The story takes places in the emotional vacuum created by the premature death of a wife and mother. Father and son co-protagonists, Theo and Robin Byrne, are each presented across the breadth of the narrative responding to the loss and absence in their lives. Alyssa Byrne is not an active participant in the story in the conventional sense, but her specter haunts the story not just on account of lingering over it as a memory, but also in the present through a variety of exceedingly different ways. Though very much dead, Aly serves to become an active presence in the story in a very unconventional sense.
Climate Change
The theme of personal grief and mourning the loss of a beloved individual is set against a larger contextual backdrop of climate change and environmental activism. The loss of Alyssa is juxtaposed against what appears to be the very likely loss of the planet as humans have always known in the wake of the lack of a response to the danger that is clearly coming. Both Theo and Robin are equally passionate about the environment, but this theme takes a big leap with the introduction of another child with a passionate concern who has become a leading advocate on the world stage. Obviously based on Greta Thunberg, the character of Inga kickstarts thematic pursuit to take the reader deeper into a world the MAGA crowd can only fantasize about for the time being.
Treating Child Behavioral Disorders
For many early reviewers of the book, the most controversial aspect is not related to climate change or an extreme right-wing takeover of American politics—indeed, why would those be controversial—but rather on the third major thematic element of the story: treating child behavioral problems. Robin suffers from something and it is made worse by the death of his mother, but it is never explicit. Robin seems to be somewhere along the autism spectrum leaning toward Asperger’s that is further complicated by obsessive-compulsive tendencies. His father is understandably reluctant to rely upon drugs, but seems somewhat extremist in his opposition to psychological treatments. Instead, he seeks out assistance from a particularly dubious former associate of his deceased wife in order to submit Robin to a neurofeedback treatment that will seem to many readers to be at least as questionable as a Ritalin prescription or extensive psychotherapy.
