There is much we can deduce but Smith is content to allow his readers to draw their own conclusions.

Smith injects his characters with so much heart you’d have to be made of stone not to fall for them. Third pic - my sister's dog Hudson looks mournfully on the empty breakfast plate that wasn't for him.Speculative fiction strongly displays the immediate paranoias and dreads of the time in which it is written; the population explosion fears examined in the work of Harry Harrison or John Brunner during the 1960s are not such modish subjects any more. The Road meets Waiting for Godot: powerful, unforgettable, unique’ - Melissa Harrison, author of At Hawthorn Time.

However, Admussen in Six Proposals for the reform of Literature in the Era of Climate Change (2016) admonished that authors should “ retire the portrait of the single soul. The machinery is failing – the farm’s percentage performance slipping inexorably downwards, losing several percentage points in the course of the story. Blink and you’ll miss it, but the two main characters do actually have names: the old man is Greil, and the boy is Jem.I accept that frustrating his readers may have been an intentional choice but for me, despite it being a thought-provoking story, Doggerland’s lack of progression and character development means it’s a novel I will likely only read once That being said I would never discourage anyone from reading the novel and drawing their own conclusions. To say that not much is happening would be unfair (there is actually a lot of action here) but everything crumbles in slow motion and there is not much either person can do against it. As well as both being dystopias, Doggerland (like The Road) gives a lot of pages to the description of tiny details and a blow by blow account of each day where very little of importance or significance generally happens. A scientific exploration of the advanced ancient civilization known as Doggerland or Fairland that disappeared 5,000 years ago. Besides the personal ambition of escaping and finding out his father’s fate, Jem asks himself relatively few questions about the world in which he finds himself.

The dialogue elicits many a wry smile, as well as a few sympathetic clenched fists when the old man is being especially troublesome. Photograph: Paul D Hunter Photography/Alamy View image in fullscreen The story takes place in a vast windfarm of turbines on Dogger Bank. The occasional visit of an unpleasant pilot who supplies them with provisions also keeps his questions unanswered.He had knotted and unknotted a strap on the bag he was holding - he must have been leaving to go out to the farm that day. With all this gradual build-up, the novel’s ending did take me by surprise and I think it is one that will divided readers. It’s a significant observation, because much of the novel’s undeniable power derives from a skilful use of a deliberately limited palette.

Set in what we can only assume to be a bleak, dystopian future, Doggerland charts the day to day life of toil and drudgery on a vast offshore wind farm. His first poetry pamphlet, Sky Burials, was published by Worple Press and his poetry and criticism have appeared in numerous outlets. I understand I can change my preference through my account settings or unsubscribe directly from any marketing communications at any time. He wrote his first book (more novella than novel) aged 13, and has dabbled in writing stories for nearly four decades since then. The way Ben Smith’s prose flows reminded me of the ocean – something that has to be intentional given that the North Sea is as much of a protagonist as the three other people in this novel.

Civilization, once so progressive and dynamic, is now, much like this immense, expiring windfarm, corroded and all but unsalvageable. Doggerland isn’t a setting conjured up by the author, but an area of land that once connected Great Britain to continental Europe.