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

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The region has been frequently ill-served by its politicians too. In the early 1980s a Tory councillor got six years for fraud and forgery. Jonathan Aitken was the MP for South Thanet when he was convicted and imprisoned for perjury. A decade ago a former Conservative leader of the council went to prison for property-related misdemeanours carried out during his time in office. This subplot ­underpins a ­wonderfully ­entertaining and lucid account, written with wit, pace and clarity. As one of the original Best of Young British Novelists in 1983, Maggie Gee has spent her career somewhat in the shadow of the big (male) beasts of that group. Undaunted, she has continued to produce probing, energised works of a strikingly independent cast of mind, darkly humorous meditations on the way we live now, speculative satires on the way we might be going. Written from multiple and ever-shifting perspectives, The Flood was not a post-apocalypse novel so much as a postmodern take on the state-of-England novel, as if shaken, stirred, and reimagined by Virginia Woolf. Climate change narratives were not nearly as common in 2004 as they are now, most especially in the arena of literary fiction in which Gee writes, and for this reason alone The Flood must be counted as prescient and innovative. It’s a contemporary novel, about a gay man and gay woman who fall in love, but it’s also – in a prequel-esque way – within the Dreamland universe. I’m having a lot of fun with it. Chance's family is one of many offered a cash grant to move out of London - and so she, her mother Jas and brother JD relocate to the seaside, just as the country edges towards vertiginous change.

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee By Nina Allan Strange Horizons - Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee By Nina Allan

This compelling novel is horribly plausible, chilling and feels eerily like a warning that’s come too late.

Yes. I suppose that’s why the movie is necessarily a major departure from the book. The movie version is a thriller, with a plot to match. But those characters actually play only bit-parts in the original book. They feel like very separate cultural objects. A beautiful book: thought-provoking, eerily prescient and very witty.’ Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half It took Rosa 7 years to write this novel. I’m guessing a lot of the time was spent polishing the similes, which are laid out aplenty and are very good. It’s the first novel I read where COVID-19 is mentioned – it must have been worked into the plot towards the end, just before the final proofs were signed off. Here are some of the similes I really liked: Our reviewer found it hard to imagine reading a better book this year after finishing the ­wonderfully ­entertaining and lucid account of how 10 key world regions are likely to shape our futures.

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

In the morning, some of the wind turbines out at sea had lost propellers. They looked like daisies with their petals ripped off.” We are simultaneously experiencing a housing crisis and a climate crisis. In this country, they haven’t come close to peaking – or clashing together – in full force yet, but they will, and it will be devastating.”saw the publication of Maggie Gee’s tenth novel The Flood, a story of climate change written in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and featuring many of the social and political concerns of the early 2000s. Two decades on, and literally a generation later, it is fascinating to see Gee’s daughter Rosa Rankin-Gee exploring similar themes in her second novel, Dreamland. In the midst of a climate crisis, with rising sea levels and soaring temperatures (up to 50C), Chance's family accept money from a foundation to relocate from appalling conditions in London to the seaside town of Margate, from where her mum, Jas, originated. But, as the seas continue to rise and occasionally inundate parts of the town, the family wage a continued war to survive on benefits. In the midst of this, Chance rescues Franky (Francesca) from a gang of boys and they feel an immediate attraction, which rapidly turns into a relationship. Then a political change comes about and a LandSave project is launched, with local people employed on building infrastructure for the project - until locals realise that what they are actually building is a massive wall, several miles inland. If this is for flood protection, residents are concerned that this means their town is going to be sacrificed to the rising sea levels. As the Government launch their relocation programme, Chance discovers that her family is classed as 'deferred', which means their moving date is not set - apparently indefinitely. Chance discovers that Franky is in fact part of the LandSave project team but even her intervention apparently can't get Chance's family on the relocation list.... This parallel universe is peopled by demons, old gods, talking ravens and a shapeshifter, all searching for a scroll box called The Firestarter. Additionally, growing up in a coastal town that has never recovered from the impact of international holidays, combined with working in London today, I'd say the book is extremely accurate for the disparity between the capital and the coastal towns experiences. The book is accessible and opens discussions on a very real issue today, where citizens are being encouraged out of London into these commuter towns which don't receive anywhere near as much support.

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee - Signed Edition - Coles Books Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee - Signed Edition - Coles Books

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. The journey begins in Australia, increasingly taking centre stage because it sits below the world’s most economically and militarily powerful dictatorship – China. Manston Airport, which among other routes hosted a twice-daily KLM service to Amsterdam before decline set in, was bought for a pound in 2013 amid encouraging noises about investment and expansion before closing down, at the cost of 144 jobs. Most recently Manston has been an overflow lorry park mitigating Brexit-related delays at the Port of Dover.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. Yes. There’s a slow decline in your book—economically, and the increasing shrugging off of responsibility by the government. Shall we talk about World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War? I think this introduces us to a different sort of near-future dystopia, something a little more fantastical, although it’s played completely straight. He got away with everything,” says Caleb, probably the closest Chance will have to a father figure. “All this call-me-by-my-first-name, I’ll-drink-a-pint-with-you bulls**t.” Duels to the death, weekly, in the garden. Adjudicated by my father, of course, who we both try to bribe. No – not competitive at all, just interested in similar things, though done differently I think. She’s definitely the OG speculative writer – her exceptional novel The Ice People, set in a close-future Britain where climate change has sparked a new ice age, came out in 1998 – and she moved to Thanet before I did. Come to think of it, I better get my defence lawyers ready. There were so many edges, edges everywhere. It’s just you never know where exactly the edge is until you tip over it.” (P. 46)

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee review – seat-edge tension in Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee review – seat-edge tension in

A beautiful book: thought-provoking, eerily prescient and very witty.’ Brit Bennett, author of 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. I know about Localisation. I know all that. We're supposed to look after ourselves. But people were dying. And when they did come, the London people, the government or whatever, it wasn't ambulances. It wasn't to help people fix their houses. They arrested people who were stealing. Not even bad stealing. Stealing to eat."

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. Dreamland is set in the near future, a dystopian novel that highlights some very real potential threats to the UK and its seaside towns. Chance is our main character, from a poor family suffering in London who are given the seemingly optimistic opportunity to move to Margate and start a new life. The realities of this move drag Chance’s family into a situation that is just as bad as before, but with some added drama too. A content warning for sustained drug use, domestic abuse, suicide and death is definitely needed! They are handled well, but run graphically through the book – so just be aware! 🙂 Dreamland brings us face-to-face with much of what we’re on the threshold of losing; nevertheless, it manages to convince us that its characters have everything still to live for.” Guardian And yet in Rosa Rankin-Gee’s superbly gripping and deeply, emotionally resonant novel, Dreamland, where all of these disturbing trends have reached a nightmarishly definitive crescendo, when hope and the capacity for fierce unconditional love should have reached an irretrievable nadir, the ability to believe in better things to come is somehow still alive, and if not well, at least present and accounted for.