Dreamland

Reviews

'She vividly captures the balance between ferocity and vulnerability as the two girls explore their burgeoning desire; one minute they’re greedy for each other, the next they’re proceeding more gingerly. Theirs is a great first love, blazing bright and furious amid the poverty and the pain, the perfect counterweight that’s needed to make the novel sing. Dreamland brings us face-to-face with much of what we’re on the threshold of losing; nevertheless, it manages to convince us that its characters have everything still to live for.' 

  ‘This brutal read has moments of hope and love but also serves as a hideous warning to fight for what’s right’ 

  ‘Brilliantly bleak… this compelling novel is horribly plausible, chilling and feels like a warning that’s come too late.’ 
  'Chance’s life is filled with poverty, crime, drugs and fear – until she meets Franky, a girl unlike anyone else she knows. Their relationship brings light and love...' 

  'Rankin-Gee’s novel is a triumph, being as much a love letter to the heady ups and crashing lows of youthful entanglements as it is a paean to the former grandeur of its stark coastal setting. Read this now.' 

  'A writer of a new time… A writer we will all want to read again and again.' 

  “Dazzling and shattering"

  'The writing clings like sand. Unexpected turns of phrase have burrowed deep into the recesses of my brain. She has created a vivid, textural portrait, teeming with life and granular, sensory detail as well as wisdom. It does what the most haunting of apocalyptic novels do, which is to shine a light on what is already happening around us and ask that we wake up.' 

  ‘Entrancing… A dark and devastating funhouse ride through curtailed innocence and apocalyptic experience. And- most uniquely- a love letter to the waning magic and melancholy of British seaside towns.  It is its own twist on the lucid dystopias of Diane Cook, Kirsten Roupenian and Emily St John Mandel. The book is also deeply cinematic- I was reminded, throughout, of Terry Gilliam's waterlogged neo-noir fantasy Tideland, as well as the dreamy realism of the films of Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay.' 

  'Rankin-Gee is a visionary empath. Every page of this book both broke my heart and made me laugh out loud. What a feat!'  Expand reviews