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

Product Information

From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: Set in what could be a future not so far in the future,it starts with a struggling mother and her two kids relocating to Margate.

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

The setting is Margate, sometime in the all too near future. “Shoreditch-on-Sea”, as it once was known, has gone from offering “charity shops, chip shops, shut shops” to food banks and “kem”, a drug on which the locals are hooked. Narrator Chance arrived as a small child, funded by the government to leave an overcrowded London along with her protective big brother, JD, and Jas, their young mother, an art school dropout whose brightness is dimmed by addiction. Eventually, JD’s pumped-up, volatile business partner, Kole, joins their band and later a baby boy named Blue arrives. ‘Liquid grace’: Rosa Rankin-Gee. Dystopias put you in a world where characters have to fight to survive. It makes all those structures of society that make life sanitised and safe suddenly disappear” 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.” It’s a reflection on where society is heading post covid as the impact of climate change becomes more apparent over time, divisions in society greater as the far right is able to grab more power over a sustained period of time, seeking a solution to over population and economic failures. 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.

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.

Rosa Rankin-Gee

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. 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. The way the author writes about the main characters' connections touched my soul. The juxtaposing flaws and merits of humans. I was there with Chance, feeling her feelings, the joy, the pain, the complications of family life and relationships, the excitement of first love, the deep trenches of friendship that endures from childhood. It was real. Dystopia? Or something uncomfortably close to the Britain we know today, where MPs pose beaming for the cameras at the opening of a constituency food bank? This is one of the great skills employed by Rankin-Gee in Dreamland, creating a vividly grim future that is never less than plausible. He sat with me for an hour. Fed me chocolate. Kept saying I was an idiot. I kept saying I was an idiot too, and that he was. I don’t know why we said that to each other so much all through our lives. Maybe because we both always knew we weren’t. Somehow he managed to make me laugh too. We both laughed. I can’t remember what about. Fear, euphoria — they’re weirdly close together sometimes.” (P. 298)

A single mum, Jas is offered a cash grant to relocate to Margate with her son JD and daughter Chance. Without questioning why they are being paid to move, the family are delighted to leave the grim bedsits they’ve endured in London. In Margate, they find a flat and Jas gets a job at a pub, where seven-year-old Chance befriends Davey. They attend the Tracey Emin Academy, until the schools start closing. People are moving out of Thanet and dangerous tides and rising temperatures keep the tourists away. Increasingly feral, Chance and Davey run amok and hang out in Dreamland, the town’s derelict amusement park. I can’t stress enough how much I loved this book. The story was incredibly gripping, there wasn’t a dull moment, it drew me in right at the start. I loved all the characters, flaws and all, it made them feel so real, like they were people you knew or had met before somehow. 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. Mirror Book Club members have chosen a brand-new book of the month – Happy All The Time by Laurie Colwin.