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

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London is still a dominant global financial powerhouse and the UK also has an astonishing output of culture, both of which earn immense sums for UK plc. It is also seeking new alliances but fears the economic and military consequences of an ­independent Scotland. The narration is extraordinarily well done. Many post-apocalyptic books have a spareness and sparseness that can sometimes feel affected. This feels incredibly naturalistic, and yet manages to be very lyrical. One review I read talked about it having a haiku-like quality. It has these clipped sentences, in a way that feels hyper-realistic to how minds think. It’s effortlessly beautiful while being violent and harrowing. This should be on every 30 books to read before you turn 30 list. Are those a thing? They should be. It’s set in Margate in the near future. In the coastal resort of Margate, hotels lie empty and sun-faded ‘For Sale’ signs line the streets. The sea is higher – it’s higher everywhere – and those who can are moving inland. A young girl called Chance, however, is just arriving. Climate change brings scorching summers and rising sea levels; there’s a great “washout” early in the book, a huge tide surging through the town causing devastating floods and drownings, something that becomes a more regular occurrence until townsfolk plan their day’s movements by the high tide times that make the streets impassable.

Rosa Rankin-Gee

I definitely got lost in the world of this story for a large section but found my self a bit out of it at times. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth

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Perhaps appropriately, Dreamland is published exactly a century after T.S. Eliot sat in a seaside shelter close to Margate railway station and wrote part of The Waste Land: “On Margate Sands/ I can connect /Nothing with nothing./ The broken fingernails of dirty hands./ My people humble people who expect/ Nothing”. Set on the Kent coast, her dystopian novel imagines a terrifying future, disturbingly close to home. Many of the issues she explores are based in fact. Deep-rooted inequality, extreme weather conditions and the implementation of harsh policies against the vulnerable are all recognisably part of the world we live in today. Rankin-Gee underlines this reality by including relevant sources at the end of her novel. Dreamland suggests one possible ending to the bleak trajectory we are on. Books featuring dystopian or post-apocalyptic themes offer us an opportunity to study human nature outside of the normal structure of society, says Rosa Rankin-Gee, author of the acclaimed novel Dreamland. Here, she recommends five other books featuring a near-future dystopia, all of which explore a societal or cultural unraveling through beautiful prose. Somtimes things happened almost too conveniently which I didn’t enjoy as much in such a bleak tale. Rosa Rankin-Gee’s novel is very much about this – about poor families given “grants” to move out of London in a not-too-distant future where the temperature and sea levels have risen and the rich are moving further inland. One such family happens to be Chance’s, the young queer narrator of this novel, who gets moved around from hostel to hostel with her brother and mother, until finally settling in Margate, a once thriving English seaside town that crumbled when cheap holiday flights became avail

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee Book review: Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee

Also: whether young or old, we’re living at a time where the world is often stranger than fiction. A lot of what’s happening to us— climate change, the spectre of war, a pandemic—are worked out or grappled with through these novels. I think we can see in them a future that we don’t want to happen. They can also be quite stoic. When you think through what you might do in those circumstances, it affords you—or at least you hope it does—some level of preparedness. Oh. My. God. I've just finished this book and immediately want to read it again. I couldn't put it down, yet wanted to read it slowly to make it last. Mirror Book Club members have chosen a brand-new book of the month – Happy All The Time by Laurie Colwin. Set in 1971, this story of self-discovery, friendship and family is a life-affirming and upbeat read, with Emma Kennedy’s trademark warmth and humour shining through every chapter. A ‘Localisation Act’ is passed, through which local authorities are required to derive all their funding through locally-sourced taxation, sending poor areas immediately into a relentless spiral of desperate poverty.

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This subplot ­underpins a ­wonderfully ­entertaining and lucid account, written with wit, pace and clarity. 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. For fans of Children of Men, Years and Years & Station Eleven, a postcard from a future Britain that’s closer than we think. It is the repository of untold secrets and last seen on Taryn’s grandfather’s bookshelves – so the searchers are convinced Taryn knows its whereabouts. is touted as the deadline for the world to go carbon neutral and preserve natural habitats. How optimistic are you that we’ll make it?

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee | Goodreads Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee | Goodreads

Chance changed as the novel did, but there were always lines or moments or bits of dialogue where I’d think ‘that’s her’, and that allowed me to find her again when at first I lost her. I love Chance.As Margate falls into further decline, a charismatic politician, Edwin Meyer, displays an interest in regenerating the Kent coastline. Hot on the heels of the aid charities, a mysterious company known as LandSave arrives in Margate and starts to employ local men. Dystopian, speculative fiction with a gorgeous and intense queer love story, complex family dynamics and characters with so much heart.

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee | Goodreads

Brutal, hopeful, too current, so human, full of soul — a very difficult mix to pull off, let alone in a near-future dystopian. Chance’s life is filled with poverty, crime, drugs and fear – until she meets Franky, a girl unlike anyone else she knows.In the coastal resort of Margate, hotels lie empty and sun-faded ‘For Sale’ signs line the streets. The sea is higher – it’s higher everywhere – and those who can are moving inland. A young girl called Chance, however, is just arriving. Margate in particular has seen its fortunes become decidedly mixed in recent decades. By the 1980s the once thriving holiday destination saw its hotels and guesthouses being converted into cheap bedsits, where there was money to be made by landlords trousering government money to house the poor and vulnerable displaced from London and other parts of the south-east by a combination of austerity and the ever-rising cost of living. Chance falls in love with Francesca, a wealthy Londoner who is working with one of those aid charities. While Chance dreams of forging a life together, Francesca is evasive. Chance is a vividly drawn character. We see that she has lived a brutal life and that her future holds little promise. We can understand why she wants to be with Francesca, and grab a part of her world, however fleeting. But their on-off relationship may pall with some readers after a while.