Not Alone

Product Information

They started to find plastic dust in rivers, soils and even the air – and also in the vast oceans, millions of pieces per square metre, washed there like it was a great big watery garbage dump.

It’s journey of survival, and also an eventual physical journey that will make your heart pound and your pulse race. Though they were well aware of the climate crisis -- Katie working with an environmental group, Jack a nurse -- they were thrilled with the plans they’d made for a life together.An exhilarating debut novel, tracing the harrowing journey of a mother and son fighting for survival and a future in a world ravaged by environmental disaster • “ Not Alone kept me breathless with tension… [A] gripping adventure story. The more recent ones I've read focused on hurricanes and flooding, so it was a fresh change to bring plastics into the mix. I mean, they barely have food, he doesn't know anything of the outside, he has spent his entire life in his apartment, not even meeting other people. Now Katie, a young mother, must forage and hunt the few surviving animals for meat as she attempts to feed her little boy, Harry.

That is not intended to make the narrator sound bad, because I actually thought the narrator was pretty good, but the combination of her voice and a whiny 5 year old boy made this an excruciatingly painful experience. Sure, humanity did this to themselves, and maybe we should all change our ways before it’s too late.

Through Katie’s eyes, he’s nothing but a threat, but there are degrees of ambiguity to how threatening he really is. Since giving birth alone in her barricaded flat, gradually giving up hope for Jack, Katie lives solely for Harry.