Not Alone

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Years after a mocroplastic mega storm killed much of the population, we meet Katie, surviving in an apartment with her son Harry, who has never known a world other than the current state it is in. Preaching on the challenges of mental illness doesn’t do much good if only the choir can relate or understand what is happening. There's a tendency for these types of books to get a little heavy handed in their message, but with the exception of Katie lamenting a few times "If we all only went vegan! The story unfolds with a mix of flashbacks that provide a few revealing plot twists that kept me interested in how it was going to work out until the very end.

Jackson's debut novel is stronger when it's surprising, as in the scenes where Katie muses on the strange beauty of the new world. Not just having to worry about yourself at the end of the world, but a tiny, totally dependent human as well. The author clearly meant for her to be a self-sufficient, strong woman who can take care of herself, but the reader is left with totally the opposite impression. Charlotte Mendelson, author of The Exhibitionist With hauntingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, this challenging novel is tough and memorable. Difficult decisions are made throughout the book, and protection at all cost is the main goal for survival with these two and the cast of characters met along the way.Through Katie’s eyes, he’s nothing but a threat, but there are degrees of ambiguity to how threatening he really is.

At times, the unwritten parts were difficult to work through and I found myself just giving up and going along. In the present, Katie worries about plastic dust particles, toxic rainstorms, and encountering other people who might have survived. Then, after years without human contact, Katie and Harry are terrified by the unwelcome arrival of another survivor. But Katie’s lungs are failing, and when she finds a hidden letter from the fiance she'd assumed to be dead, she takes Harry on a journey that will lead them to the northern reaches of Scotland.Katie has become expert at foraging food from surviving plants and trapping rabbits, foxes, sometimes a dog. Coincidentally, I was reading Greta Thunberg’s Climate Book, the day I received an advance copy of Jackson’s novel.

Climate change has been the focal point of environmental concerns with the threat of rising seas, flooding, droughts, and food shortages attributed to it. It's something all parents can relate to, as so many of us worry about the world our children are going to inherit. Not Alone describes a future in which the world has done too little, too late to address the climate crisis. Jackson’s debut novel is a dystopian tale that’s so plausible – so reachable – it’s bound to impact all who read it.Jackson’s debut novel, Not Alone, finds a new refreshing environmental disaster to worry about: toxic plastic dust. They’re almost never in significant danger or distress, so any high stakes scenes were low tension because I knew they’d get out of it with just a little scratch. It’s journey of survival, and also an eventual physical journey that will make your heart pound and your pulse race. Then at the end after 3/4 of the book being about how dangerous and polluted outside was, they end up walking for days in an apparently less polluted Scotland.

Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).The land they travel is rife with “dread brown grass and leafless dying trees, everything withering and winking out, brown and black, the sky an unsettling thick grey haze that blocks the sun .