"This enthralling novel explores climate change, social inequality, refugee identity and human compulsions as a tsunami threatens to submerge a future version of Britain."
Continuing the dystopian milieu of her The Biggerers debut, Amy Lilwall’s The Water That May Come is a potently gripping work that challenges ideas around refugee identity while posing pertinent questions about privilege in the context of an impending environmental catastrophe. In this case, as an Icelandic volcano is about to unleash a seismic tsunami that will see Britain submerged. In this overarching context, readers are treated to deeply involving portraits of four connected characters — privileged heir Pinko, young artist Gavin, working-class veterinary nurse Jane, and her pregnant teenage daughter, Ashleigh — whose respective responses to the impending disaster reveal much about the human condition.
Bookended by personified evocations of the volcano (“Hrafnablótsjökul cracks open one eye, but her icicle-dry eyelashesare meshed together. The moon is high and the air is swollen… She groans, swallows it, closes her eye. Not yet. Not quite yet”), the story opens in February 2032, when it becomes clear that “Europe isn’t that keen on receiving seventy-two million evacuees, eighty million with Ireland, of course”. Then all flights are cancelled, followed by a news announcement: “New Intimacy Law to be enforced as of Friday”, which precipitates a rush on same-sex marriages, no matter what individuals’ true sexual orientation is.
By July, as Ashleigh sees it, “England is empty of respectable people. Only the poor, broken households remain. The idiots and the criminals. The single women and their dirty, pregnant daughters”. This inequity is echoed by Jane, who encounters rich people who will “pay their way out of an unparalleled natural disaster, while the proles are forced to fuck in front of an immigration jury” as a result of the Intimacy Law. At the same time, Ashleigh, Jane, Pinko and Gavin become irrevocably bound as an unexpected strike of romance is tangled by complicated connections.
Exploring fundamental human compulsions — to love, to feel physical and emotional connections, to protect and to survive — The Water That May Come is brilliantly plotted. As a menacing sense of the eruption and ensuing rising waters closes in, the drama rises through multiple races against time and a succession of ricocheting revelations.
| Primary Genre | Dystopian and utopian fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
As rising seas threaten to engulf Britain, four lives are on the brink: Pinko, a privileged heir clinging to decadence; Jane, a working-class veterinary nurse racing to reunite her family; her pregnant teenage daughter Ashleigh, grappling with impending motherhood; and humble young artist Gavin. With sanctuary beckoning across the Channel, each faces impossible choices. Who will they save? What will they sacrifice?
A lyrical, thought-provoking novel which blurs borders and challenges notions of identity and belonging. In a future where we all may become refugees, it asks: how far would you go to stay afloat?
The Water That May Come features in the following genres: Star Books, Dystopian and utopian fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction
The Water That May Come is available in Paperback
The Water That May Come was written by Amy Lilwall and published by Fly on the Wall Press
£11.69
.jpeg)
