Reviews and Comments

Besides the good story, well told, this book is a masterclass in how to structure and pace a novel. The author clearly knows how to edit, as this is just the right length. So many books start well, but outstay their welcome. It is a cracking good read.

The story is familiar to anyone who enjoys dystopian speculative fiction (Atwood et al.). It echoes the recent BBC Radio 4 play 'Borderland' (www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08dnhjx), with themes of migration and what happens when nationalism and nativism lead governments into unravelling the social contract. One of the points of the book is that if we allow our government to treat 'the Others' as undesirables without rights, then in so doing we enable a process whereby our own rights are discarded. The distinction between us (with comfort and prosperity) and the others (facing insecurity and death) becomes a bureaucratic distinction. Too easily, we can find ourselves on the wrong side of The Wall.

The book appears to be about climate change, and inter-generational strife, but these themes are, I think, incidental to the plot. Which I hope allows for the possibility of a sequel that digs into those issues more thoroughly.

I tried hard to like this book, but I just could not make progress. Perhaps I am not in the right mood for this style of writing. It all seemed rather smug in places, and even the more interesting lyrical passages would get wrecked by a nod and a wink to the reader. For instance, p.181:
'...Daniel Gluck taking leaf of his senses at last, his tongue a broad green leaf, leaves growing through the sockets of his eyes, leaves thrustling (very good word for it) out of his ears, leaves tendrilling down through the caves of his nostrils and out and round till he's swathed in foliage, leafskin, relief.'
I would usually like writing like this, especially the poetic license on words like 'thrustling' and 'tendrilling'. But that parenthesis troubles me. I do not want the narrator telling me what is a 'good word' or not, unless it is clear that this passage is indeed an interior monologue. Perhaps it is? At this stage of the book I was confused and a bit irritated by the whole thing. So upon reading this passage - which was almost great - I put the book down and will read no further. I have given this book too many chances, and life is too short to read to the end and face further disappointment.