Dreamland: An Evening Standard 'Best New Book' of 2021

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The Australians also face the challenge of climate change and the risk of large-scale population shifts. Marshall explores the fascinating possibility of governments being forced to build new major cities on more hospitable territory. With zero employment opportunities, JD begins dealing drugs while Chance, aged 13, develops a talent for breaking into empty properties. Chance’s voice is naïve and knowing – she’s barely out of childhood but has had to hone her survival instinct from an early age. Chance’s mother wades through a succession of unsuitable men, until JD’s business partner, Kole, drifts into their orbit and Jas develops an unhealthy obsession with him. Kole moves the family into a claustrophobic high-rise flat overlooking the sea. He is a cold, controlling presence, and Jas fails to protect her children from his machinations. In the morning, some of the wind turbines out at sea had lost propellers. They looked like daisies with their petals ripped off.” You said earlier that it’s quite similar to How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, which you considered including in your list of five.

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee review – first love and rising

We are in the once refined but now rundown seaside town of Margate. This is an area already steeped in a strange, singular psychology, slightly out of step with the rest of the country. David Seabrook’s 2002 All the Devils Are Here depicted Kent’s coast as both a bolthole and a blind alley for a motley, menacing band of eccentrics. “Planet Thanet” is how Chance explains their environs to an outsider; an increasingly isolated ecosystem in decline. In Chance, the novel’s protagonist, Rankin-Gee has created one of those characters that stays with the reader long after finishing the book. Part Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop, part Turtle from Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling, Chance is named with irony as hers is a life all-but devoid of opportunity. From the Booker shortlisted author of The Mars Room comes this collection of essays and articles gathered together from the last two decades. The long time span doesn’t reduce the freshness of Kushner’s prose as she takes on topics ranging from a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp to her love of classic cars. This compelling novel is horribly plausible, chilling and feels eerily like a warning that’s come too late. I can’t decided if I love or hate the vague information about the services offered in this dystopian (but very real future)When the government was bad, charity would come our way,” says Chance of her teenage years. “NGOs, non-profits, go-it-aloners. When the government got worse, we’d get less – people needed what they had at home. These were the rhythms we lived by.” It is the twin sustainers of love and hope that help Chance to weather grief, disappointment and what effectively amounts to governmental genocide of its poorer citizens, and which given Dreamland such a rich, living quality, a tangible, palpable reminder that the human spirit can rise to immense challenges if given even half a chance.

Mirror Book Club: The Power Of Geography a fascinating look Mirror Book Club: The Power Of Geography a fascinating look

For me, they’ve held an appeal since I was a child. One of the books I’m going to talk about is Z for Zachariah; I remember it lighting a flame in me. Dystopias put you in a world where characters (and thus, in some way you, as a reader) have to fight to survive. It makes all those structures of society that make life sanitised and safe suddenly disappear, and I think that’s something that can be particularly appealing to young people—the idea of suddenly, drastically having agency. The band’s compelling story is told by a multitude of voices interviewed by journalist S Sunny Shelton. Her father Jimmy was a drummer for the band and murdered at the showcase – and she is determined to find out exactly happened. Exactly. Except it had, like, a single pair of underwear and a can of beans in it. But there was this feeling that something might happen, and you need to be ready. I talked about that before—the teetering feeling of fear and hope and agency… catnip to a young teenager. On to Ethiopia which, with 12 large lakes and nine major rivers, is empowered by water. Its neighbours are reliantPessimistic forecasts put 2037, which is where the main part of the story takes place, at 2 ft+, but it’s not linear or predictable. There are lots of terrifying potential tipping points. Steady declines, and then cliff-edges.