(and it is exquisite!)
10th May 2016
Update: Its a dystopian novel set in a world very like our own, but after a cataclysmic event. The lead character, Lala, is the daughter of a very wealthy couple, living in Bloomsbury near the British Museum. (Novels set in London always have a soft spot in my reading heart). The world is running out of food, and people are starving and forced to live in the public buildings, like the museums. In an attempt to enable his family to survive, Lala's family buys a crusieship, stockpiles it with food, and cultural artifacts, and chooses 500 people to save, and they sail away together. Only there is a problem, while he has vetted the 500 passengers, he hasn't vetted his daughter or his wife, and both of them struggle with the idea of stockpilign wealth and abandoning the starving people of London.
It’s a lovely read - Lala is at once engaging, and also irritating as hell! She has a childlike simplicity to her, which makes her a good narrator. I stumbled across this book and it seems to have re-ignited my interest in fiction, as well as having an author who writes a wonderful blog. It’s so refreshing to find a writer willing to acknowledge the truth of the writing field at the moment - that there is no magic bullet that will enable anyone to get published, and the truth is that in order to write, you just have to work hard at it.
I find this more heartening than the usual stories we get told about people being discovered overnight, or having almost magical success. This is not Antonia Honeywell's first novel, it is her first published novel. Now that's a story I can relate to!