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Doggerland

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Female bodies appear solely as grotesque fertility figurines in the old man’s collection of relics – “headless torsos with jutting breasts and smooth fat thighs that stirred strange thoughts [the boy] didn’t know he possessed. It is a haunting story and could break the prejudice against speculative fiction often reflected in prize lists. His first poetry pamphlet, Sky Burials, was published by Worple Press and his poetry and criticism have appeared in numerous outlets. A War Transformed is a skirmish wargame set in a world where World War I was utterly changed by forces far beyond human comprehension. In the North Sea, far from what remains of the coastline, a wind farm stretches for thousands of acres.

If anything, it’s becoming even more prevalent – a symptom of our widespread anxiety about the future of the human race in a time of environmental crisis. Like Smith’s Doggerland, Rym Kechacha’s Dark River (2020) draws links between the neolithic past and the climate changed and challenged near-future, although Smith’s interludes into the past are more brief observational notes unlike Kechacha’s protagonist driven narrative.I don’t doubt that there is some talent in the wordsmithery and descriptive style of this book, but I found it mundane and with no structure or purpose. They pass the time playing pool, drinking homebrew, and fishing for artefacts of a lost civilization.

Consequently, the son was sent by the Company to fulfil his contract, but where he went remains a mystery and the Old Man is loath to discuss the matter. Greil knows the facts about the father’s disappearance but has become apathetic, spending days trawling the shallow seabed for plastic debris and ancient artefacts of submerged Doggerland, the Neolithic land bridge which connected the east of England to the European continent thousands of years ago. Ben Smith’s novel takes place on an offshore windfarm that stretches for thousands of acres – all that is visible from the main rig is row upon row of turbines as far as the eye can see.Although Jem inhabits a sprawling rusting farm of wind turbines some 80 miles in radius in the middle of the North Sea, there is a claustrophobic feel to the setting, with its barren uniformity and a cast tiny – almost Beckett-like – in number.

Thinking back to the books I studied at school, I can see Doggerland being analysed in literature classes for its narrative choices. For instance, we are told that the Boy was sent on the rig to replace his father, after the latter’s unsuccessful escape attempt. Sentences are frequently curt, communicating only what they need to, but there are moments of levity too, most of which come from the old man’s ornery attitude towards the owner of the supply boat. A novel that’s by turns elegiac and fiercely hopeful, it’s an assured debut from a formidable talent, who I hope we’ll see plenty more of in the future.We’ve got a number of books that hit our shelves before we shut our doors, and perhaps didn’t get the love they deserved, so we’re shining a light on these fantastic new(ish) titles now. Trading Address (Warehouse) Unit E, Vulcan Business Complex, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EB. In a recent article I quoted from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale about societal changes happening so slowly they are almost imperceptible, or as she put it far more vividly: “in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it. The setting is the not-too-far-distant future on a vast offshore wind farm in the North Sea where two men (The Old Man and The Boy - they are named, but their names are rarely used) work as maintenance engineers.

The boy has been sent by the Company to take his place, but the question of where he went and why is one for which the Old Man will give no answer. Ben Smith’s Doggerland (2019) falls firmly in the first camp with a very close third person perspective on a young man Jem, usually referred to in the text simply as the Boy. The Mesolithic hunter-gatherers lived in a rich, but constantly changing world – to which they successfully adapted. For much of the book, the story centres on 'the boy' and 'the old man' who spend their lives maintaining a vast endless and deteriorating wind farm somewhere in the north sea. There is much we can deduce but Smith is content to allow his readers to draw their own conclusions.

Set in the future on a slowly breaking down wind farm maintained as much as possible by the Old Man and the Boy whose names remain a mystery for most of the book. At Books2Door, we believe that reading is a fundamental skill that every child should have to help improve their vocabulary, grammar, and critical thinking skills. I heard of a phrase used in the American coast guard to upbraid people fretting over the relative minutiae of their everyday lives – it is “ The sea doesn’t care. It is a memorable read and I was fascinated by the exploration of life far away from civilization, the scenes of survival in a harsh setting and the loneliness of living in a confined space at times even felt reminiscent of our lockdown times, albeit much, much worse of course. He was part of a panel discussion on the role that poetry might play in environmental activism, and read several recent poems inspired by the Earth System Model, which provides the data for the International Panel on Climate Change.

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