Summer leaves….

Epic fail again – summer came and I forgot to blog! But that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle, far from it. It’s been a busy time campaigning for the public library service, reading lots of excellent books, and even getting a bit of allotmenting done.

I’ve attended several of the public meetings organised by Leicestershire County Council to persuade us that volunteers can run the library service. These meetings were heated. Very heated. It’s heartening that so many people care and are so angry about the proposals. The statistics quoted by the Council representatives were flawed. Their position- that this was a consultation – was exposed as a sham. We gathered signatures on petitions, demonstrated outside libraries, wrote passionate letters and emails, and even got our picture in the local rag. Their decision will be “made” next Friday. Watch this space, or even better, the Library Campaign at www.librarycampaign.com.

Books-wise, I’ve read a few…. Highlights have been The Girl with all the Gifts by M.R. Carey, a rollicking zombie apocalypse thriller with an intriguingly different central premise. Couldn’t put it down! Austerity Bites: A journey to the sharp end of cuts in the UK by Mary O’Hara also was hard to put down, mainly because it was so utterly shocking. I urge everyone with a social conscience to read this book. And Far from the Tree: Parents, children and the search for identity by Andrew Solomon was magnificent; a very long but rewarding exploration of how parents learn to love (or not) children who have “horizontal identities”, based on hundreds of interviews with real people. It made me both laugh and cry, and I think made me a better human being for having read it.

But mostly, I have been utterly lost in the off-kilter world of Phil Rickman, having now read all of his Merrily Watkins series. I can’t recommend these enough. And I love them so much I even went on a little pilgrimage to Hay-on-Wye, setting of The Magus of Hay, and was delighted to discover the infamous bookshop (site of a neo-Nazi Satanist murder…) at the novel’s core was real (although it’s actually a music shop, I think the evidence was compelling…)

If ever you get the chance to visit Hay, please do so. It’s a fascinating place steeped in quirky history, and the booksellers are keeping a very venerable tradition of reading print books alive.

Other than that, I’ve been up to lots of other things that shall remain my own business, but it’s been a good summer and many excellent books have been devoured. I’ll try and remember to share them…!

Riot by Sarah Mussi

I’m reading this Young Adult novel the day after participating in a protest against library cuts, so its message is especially hard-hitting. Riot is chillingly relevant – and I hope, not prescient. It’s 2018 and after years of recession, Britain is facing a population crisis. The government’s response is to impose sterilisation on all teenagers who are not in employment or training (those pesky NEETs…). Society is about to go into meltdown.

Tia is angry and at the forefront of organising protests against the “Snip Bill” as it’s known; but shot in a demonstration, she is recued by Cobain, leader of a notorious movement of thugs and thieves. As the government sanctions shoot to kill policies, Tia and Cobain go into hiding, desperate to find a way to stop the inevitable slaughter and to scupper the government’s plan. Just one problem – the government official responsible for the sterilisation policy is Tia’s father….

This is an action-packed, fast-paced and utterly plausible thriller. There are many obvious parallels with the current state of our nation and this is where the novel gets its raw power. Government documents filled with dehumanising jargon, identifying the poorest and most socially excluded as being responsible for the crisis – ring any bells? It’s so horrifyingly familiar. As it becomes clear to Tia that the government are engineering the crisis in order to cement the power of the privileged few, her outraged disbelief that this couldn’t be happening in Britain gives way to the determination to stand up for the people, at whatever cost. We’re aren’t at the same point (I hope) but this novel makes it abundantly clear that we’re not that far away. Dystopias lurk just over the horizon, and yes, in Britain too. It’s the power of public protest – shockingly depicted here – that is the only power we have. I hope this novel inspires many young people to develop a questioning attitude and interest in politics and human rights. When you compare events in this story to the landscape of British politics today, it’s clear that horrendous things can be done to human beings in the name of “austerity”, in the face of “national crisis”, and that we can reach that point far, far quicker than we imagine. Wake up and pay attention – this is real life, and not just a story.

Hodder, 2014, ISBN 9781444910100

And in case you were wondering, this was my placard!