12 May 2013 03:41:52
There is a wonderfully symbolic scene in which useless bank notes catch light on a bonfire and are blown away, spreading destruction wherever they land. Cross's focus, however, is less on the big picture than on the individuals caught up in this social catastrophe.
Matt tells the story. His family have already lost a father and a grandfather to the raiders. Matt's mother soldiers on, remarries and grows vegetables to eat and barter with. But they are branded as "scadgers" – hoarders – and the family's details are posted on the internet. After violent raiders attack again, Matt's mother arranges for him, his brother Taco and their stepfather to travel to France, where the welcome is cool and home is a tent in a makeshift refugee camp.
The camp is a testing ground for character. Each will experience hunger, cold, powerlessness, boredom. Queuing and bartering become a way of life. Some cope better than others. There are those who make nettle soup for the whole camp, and there are those who despair and curl up in their tents.
"Is it always going to be like this? Will things never be good again?" Taco asks. "You don't even remember the really good times," thinks his brother.
Ironically, it is Bob, a streetwise "fixer" with dubious values, who galvanises the refugees into action. An astute manipulator of people, Bob has a talent for landing on his feet. When he discovers that Matt can mend bicycles, he sees a lucrative opportunity, and Matt soon finds he is mixing with people he'd do better to avoid.
Cross squeezes her characters in a moral vice. There are no easy answers to the questions she poses. When there's not enough for everyone, are Matt and his family wrong to eat the food they have worked to grow? How far would you go to get medicine for a relative who might die without it? In such conditions, it is all too easy to trip over the thin end of a moral wedge.
Cross, who has won both the Carnegie and the Whitbread, is an expert storyteller: her plotting is seamless; her prose is supple and economical; she creates characters you care for, and depicts a world so plausible you can smell it. If I have a gripe with this engrossing tale, it is that the ending came too soon; small things are resolved but bigger things aren't. I'd have loved an epilogue or the promise of a sequel. The issues Cross raises will stay with you.
One of the characters quotes Einstein, "If you want to keep balanced, you have to keep moving". Apt advice, whether for riding a bicycle or for adapting to survive in a world that capitalism has failed.
