Genre: Mystery | Psychological Thriller | Fiction
Release Date: Expected 23rd March 2023
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Fern is an artist - a writer, a reader. And now, a criminal.
Five years ago, any form of fiction was outlawed. No more books, no more stories, no more fairy tales to send your children to sleep and calm their nightmares. And even though since the ban, she's gone into a government-approved job, and removed any sense of her identity from the world, her words won't be silent for long as she finds a new place at an illegal phone line reading bedtime stories to tired and frightening children who need hope.
Here, she meets Hunter. A young boy who wants to hear her stories, to know imagination and happiness. A boy she feels as though she knows. A boy who isn't hers, but feels like it. As she starts to care about him, she can't help but wonder if she can really trust the little voice at the end of the phone.
As the oppressive regime closes in and reality starts to feel like the farcical, frightening worlds she once wrote about, she needs to be careful - or it could mean the end of her own story.
"What would I see? The boundary between fiction and truth disintegrate? Truth. Fiction. Did I know the difference?"
A spellbinding speculative story that explores the complexity of grief and loss in a world where a fascist government has taken away creativity and imagination to remove individuality and freedom. This world feels familiar in a way, and it's clear that this isn't just about the books but the ideas within those books - ideas about feminism, about the rights of BAME, LGBT+ and disabled people, about fighting back and being accepted. When I imagined living in this world without the comfort of writing, of stories, it chilled me.
The setting is suffocating - you can feel a constant watchful eye as you flick through the pages, daring you to step out of line. The imagery throughout is visceral and evocative, from the first few pages the sight of pyres of books being lost into ashes sets the dark and disturbing tone for this tale.
Fern is disillusioned, her sense of self stolen from her - but there's still a sense of hopeful defiance in her that is clear from the moment we're introduced. We read her private words as she reflects on a world that has taken everything from her. She's quite literally an open book to us, just not to the rest of the world. She has beautifully written quirks and narrative styles that create such a distinct voice that is deeply compelling. She authentically explores loss and grief in all its forms - whether it's love, identity, passion or people with such tenderness and honestly in such an original way that makes it impossible not to connect.
The chapters are short, moving quickly and making for an easy read with a conversational, thoughtful tone in the narration. It's descriptive, but not over-written, allowing us moments to pause and reflect, to follow Ferns trains of thoughts before moving on into the next phase of the story and gradually leading us towards an absolutely mesmerising conclusion. It's dramatic and cinematic, quiet at first before morphing into something reminiscent of a fever dream, one where nothing is quite as it seems and fiction crashes into reality in the most explosive of ways. It's rare you can say with complete honesty that you never saw something coming, but Swanson left me completely in the dark and blew my mind.
This is a striking portrayal of real pain and loss, but it's also a love letter to the dreamers and artists who look for beauty and meaning everywhere, even when it's hopeless. A blinding testament to the fact that a world without stories is just a rock spinning through space.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for an honest review.
cw: violence, oppression, fertility and pregnancy, death, mental illness.
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