Water in the Desert Fire in the Night by Gethan Dick: The end of the world as we know it

I was a bit doubtful about Gethan Dick’s debut when it was pitched to me. Dystopian fiction doesn’t usually appeal but it’s published by Tramp Press, a small Irish indie whose books I’ve enjoyed in the past. Water in the Desert Fire in the Night follows a disparate group of people, neighbours on a London street, over a year after the world changes irrevocably.

He still believed that things were going to go back to normal. As if there was back. As if there was normal. There’s only forward, and you can only go forward from where you are, however wrecked that place is.

Audaz and her neighbours shelter after an explosion rocks their street. Pressure Drop and Sarah know each other but could hardly be called friends while the rest are only on nodding terms. They set themselves up in a group of buildings under the railway arches, telling their stories and sharing their skills, some more useful than others. Having spent much of her adult life partying, Audaz has few that are applicable despite her upbringing by resourceful parents, but Sarah picks up on both her photographic memory and her linguistic abilities. She’s a retired midwife, intent on travelling to friends in the French Alps where she plans to help bring the next generation into a world which will desperately need them with Audaz as her apprentice. When they reach the coast, Sarah insists they must stay until the pregnant sister of the man who will help them cross the Channel has her baby, long enough for Audaz to fall in love. This is the first step on a long and challenging journey that will take them through abandoned villages and landscapes, encountering both the kindness and the cruelty of strangers until they reach what will become their home and family.

One thing’s for sure, next time there is an apocalypse I will not be packing leggings.

Audaz guides us along their route, flitting backwards and forwards through her narrative, telling us her own story and how the world as we know it became devastated not by a dramatic cataclysm but by a plague followed by societal breakdown. She’s an engaging narrator, often funny, which I hadn’t expected. Horrors – the misogynistic Chateau is ruled by a dead ringer for Andrew Tate – are balanced with altruism on this arduous journey through a world in which nature is no longer constrained by humans, the apocalypse still fresh enough for there to be food for the taking. It’s an entertaining, optimistic book, written with humanity and wit which could be read as an alternative pandemic novel had we not been saved by vaccinations.

Tramp Press: Dublin 9781915290168 268 pages Paperback