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

Product Information

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. Again Rankin-Gee does not gild this particularly lacklustre lily; rather, by being unstintingly honest about the challenged Chance faces in her daily struggle to survive, and yet how this impressive young woman gets up each day and tries to make things work, she beautifully brings to life the capacity of the human spirit to keep hope alive even in the most diabolical of circumstances.

Dreamland by Rosa Rankin-Gee | Goodreads

The Australians also face the challenge of climate change and the risk of large-scale population shifts. When her family leave to go and see what has happened in the local town, they do not come back, so she believes she’s now totally alone, maybe the last person on the planet. Daily Express 'Rankin-Gees novel is a triumph, being as much a love letter to the heady ups and crashing lows of youthful entanglements as it is a paean to the former grandeur of its stark coastal setting. As a final question: do you think that people’s appetites for near-future dystopia books, or dystopic books in general, have changed over the pandemic period?somewhere in the hauntingly spooky and hilariously freaky mix and, of course, solving a great mystery which in the case of 1999’s Scooby-Doo!

The Best Near-Future Dystopias | Five Books Expert

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. The Mirror's travel newsletter brings you the latest news and expert analysis from across the industry, as well as plenty of travel inspiration.Yes, tell us a little bit about Dreamland, your own recent book which features a near-future dystopia. Then, despite being among most vulnerable regions to the consequences of leaving the European Union, Thanet voted in favour of Brexit by a majority of almost two to one. Eventually, JD’s pumped-up, volatile business partner, Kole, joins their band and later a baby boy named Blue arrives. In all the other books I’ve recommended, you get a first-person narrator, or a defined cast of characters.

Book review: Dreamland | New Humanist Book review: Dreamland | New Humanist

So again, I think that fits my theme—what I love in all these books is that there’s a texture of a life we know and realism.JD's business partner, Kole, has a violent, charismatic energy that whirlpools around him and threatens to draw in the whole family. The book is also deeply cinematic- I was reminded, throughout, of Terry Gilliam's waterlogged neo-noir fantasy Tideland, as well as the dreamy realism of the films of Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay. 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? There’s a different kind of sky over the Isle of Thanet, a vast canopy, bigger even somehow than that over the flatlands of the Fens. It does what the most haunting of apocalyptic novels do, which is to shine a light on what is already happening around us and ask that we wake up.

Rosa Rankin-Gee: Planet Thanet - Bookanista Rosa Rankin-Gee: Planet Thanet - Bookanista

With zero employment opportunities, JD begins dealing drugs while Chance, aged 13, develops a talent for breaking into empty properties.A “goofy white boy” with song-writing chops, he heads to America, sees Opal perform in a nightclub, and persuades her to work with him. A single mum, Jas is offered a cash grant to relocate to Margate with her son JD and daughter Chance. Some people couldn’t think of anything they wanted to do less than watch something pandemic-related during the pandemic. Though it could certainly be classified as “cli-fi”, Dreamland is also a love story – two – and an account of survival, defiance even, in the face of male violence. Wilkie Collins wrote a considerable part of The Woman in White in Ramsgate, which boasts two blue plaques at addresses where he would hole up with two different lovers.