A review by reuben___
Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

 This may be my favourite piece of contemporary fiction I’ve read this year so far. The world that Rankin-Gee creates is so real, tactile, and visceral, it feels as though you could reach out and touch it. 

Beautiful and heartbreaking, Dreamland transports its readers to the slow and violent end of the world. Here, austerity never ends, it transforms into an even more vicious and murderous regime. We watch this unfold slowly and suddenly through the eyes of Chance, the story’s narrator. 

Chance begins the story as a child, in a world that looks much like ours now. Her mother and brother are convinced to move out of London by a new housing scheme, where council house tenants are paid to leave the city. Their mother chooses Margate, where she lived as an art student, and was happy. Which is how they end up in the seaside town as England begins to fall into the sea and overheat.

This story is littered with love and violence, it is beautiful and terrible and deeply moving  as we follow the lives of a community condemned to face the end of the world, but determined to live.
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