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Doggerland
Doggerland is brilliantly inventive, beautifully-crafted and superbly gripping debut novel about loneliness and hope, nature and survival—set on an off-shore windfarm in the not-so-distant future.
‘His father’s breath had been loud in the small room. It had smelled smoky, or maybe more like dust. ‘I’ll get out,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll come back for you, ok?’ The boy remembered that; had always remembered it. And, for a time, he’d believed it too.’
In the North Sea, far from what remains of the coastline, a wind farm stretches for thousands of acres.
The Boy, who is no longer really a boy, and the Old Man, whose age is unguessable, are charged with its maintenance. They carry out their never-ending work as the waves roll, dragging strange shoals of flotsam through the turbine fields. Land is only a memory.
So too is the Boy’s father, who worked on the turbines before him, and disappeared.
The boy has been sent by the Company to take his place, but the question of where he went and why is one for which the Old Man will give no answer.
As the Old Man dredges the sea for lost things, the Boy sifts for the truth of his missing father. Until one day, from the limitless water, a plan for escape emerges…
Doggerland is a haunting and beautifully compelling story of loneliness and hope, nature and survival.
‘His father’s breath had been loud in the small room. It had smelled smoky, or maybe more like dust. ‘I’ll get out,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll come back for you, ok?’ The boy remembered that; had always remembered it. And, for a time, he’d believed it too.’
In the North Sea, far from what remains of the coastline, a wind farm stretches for thousands of acres.
The Boy, who is no longer really a boy, and the Old Man, whose age is unguessable, are charged with its maintenance. They carry out their never-ending work as the waves roll, dragging strange shoals of flotsam through the turbine fields. Land is only a memory.
So too is the Boy’s father, who worked on the turbines before him, and disappeared.
The boy has been sent by the Company to take his place, but the question of where he went and why is one for which the Old Man will give no answer.
As the Old Man dredges the sea for lost things, the Boy sifts for the truth of his missing father. Until one day, from the limitless water, a plan for escape emerges…
Doggerland is a haunting and beautifully compelling story of loneliness and hope, nature and survival.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published April 4, 2019
42 people are currently reading
1886 people want to read
About the author
Ben Smith
2 books38 followersBen Smith is based in North Cornwall, where he lives with his partner, the author Lucy Wood (4th Estate) and is a creative writing lecturer at Plymouth University. His first poetry pamphlet, Sky Burials, was published by Worple Press and his poetry and criticism have appeared in numerous outlets. As an academic, he specialises in environmental literature focusing particularly on oceans, waste and the ‘Anthropocene’, relating to human impact on geology. He is one of the founding editors of The Clearing, a magazine about landscape and place.
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March 31, 2019
This book is possibly a definite contender for the bleakest book I have read in years. Set in the future on a slowly breaking down wind farm maintained as much as possible by the Old Man and the Boy whose names remain a mystery for most of the book. To say that not much is happening would be unfair (there is actually a lot of action here) but everything crumbles in slow motion and there is not much either person can do against it. The comparisons to The Road are spot-on; this future is bleak and narrow in the way th world can be seen by the protagonists. The atmosphere is equally distressing and overwhelming while the language remains a sharp edge that can dazzle the reader.
That this book was written by an author who also writes poetry, is impossible to overlook – the sentences are beautiful and unusual and by far my favourite thing about this book. The way Ben Smith’s prose flows reminded me of the ocean – something that has to be intentional given that the North Sea is as much of a protagonist as the three other people in this novel.
But I don’t particularly like The Road and I feel a lot of the same feelings towards that book as I do towards this book: I can see how it is very well done, impressive even, but for me the bleakness became overwhelming and I had to force myself to keep reading. But this has everything to do with the kind of reader I am and nothing to do with this book. It is a book I can see many people loving and I hope many people will pick it up – because it is so very well done and so interestingly told.
I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and HarperCollins UK/ 4th Estate in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
That this book was written by an author who also writes poetry, is impossible to overlook – the sentences are beautiful and unusual and by far my favourite thing about this book. The way Ben Smith’s prose flows reminded me of the ocean – something that has to be intentional given that the North Sea is as much of a protagonist as the three other people in this novel.
But I don’t particularly like The Road and I feel a lot of the same feelings towards that book as I do towards this book: I can see how it is very well done, impressive even, but for me the bleakness became overwhelming and I had to force myself to keep reading. But this has everything to do with the kind of reader I am and nothing to do with this book. It is a book I can see many people loving and I hope many people will pick it up – because it is so very well done and so interestingly told.
I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and HarperCollins UK/ 4th Estate in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
May 7, 2019
Doggerland
is a novel that is stripped back in almost every possible way:
The setting – an offshore rig, a vast wind farm in the North Sea. Nothing to see but turbines and saltwater for miles around.
The cast – two grizzled and taciturn maintenance men, one older (“the old man”) and one not so old (“the boy”, though he’s not actually a boy).
The context – sometime in the future sea levels have risen. Vague suggestions of the wider world now controlled by ‘the Company’ and an occasional word in Mandarin are the few hints provided.
The prose – unadorned, almost flat, often technical. Quite a lot about turbines and nacelles, gunwales and gantries. More poetic interstices describe the glacial melt that flooded Doggerland over the course of millennia, cutting Britain off from continental Europe.
The characterisations – the two taciturn figures in this story are ciphers, we never learn much about them. Their emotional and psychological state is mostly left up to the reader’s inference.
The plot – minimal. I won’t give away what happens but don’t go into this one expecting thrills and spills.
Doggerland has some beautifully cinematic moments and touches of dry absurdist humour. With the right actors to bring it to life, it could be marvellous adapted for the stage. But on the page it feels lacking, underdeveloped. Subtle and understated, perhaps to a fault.
The setting – an offshore rig, a vast wind farm in the North Sea. Nothing to see but turbines and saltwater for miles around.
The cast – two grizzled and taciturn maintenance men, one older (“the old man”) and one not so old (“the boy”, though he’s not actually a boy).
The context – sometime in the future sea levels have risen. Vague suggestions of the wider world now controlled by ‘the Company’ and an occasional word in Mandarin are the few hints provided.
The prose – unadorned, almost flat, often technical. Quite a lot about turbines and nacelles, gunwales and gantries. More poetic interstices describe the glacial melt that flooded Doggerland over the course of millennia, cutting Britain off from continental Europe.
The characterisations – the two taciturn figures in this story are ciphers, we never learn much about them. Their emotional and psychological state is mostly left up to the reader’s inference.
The plot – minimal. I won’t give away what happens but don’t go into this one expecting thrills and spills.
Doggerland has some beautifully cinematic moments and touches of dry absurdist humour. With the right actors to bring it to life, it could be marvellous adapted for the stage. But on the page it feels lacking, underdeveloped. Subtle and understated, perhaps to a fault.
December 27, 2020
This book has been on my to read list for a while, and is a rather impressive debut, if not the most cheerful of books to be reading over Christmas.
Set in a despoiled and bleak future world, Smith's hero Jem, who the narrator calls "the boy" lives on a platform in the North Sea with one other man "the old man" Greil. They are supposed to be there to maintain the old and increasingly unreliable generators on an offshore wind farm, and their only contact with the outside world is through the corrupt trader who occasionally visits in a supply ship.
The fourth character is Jem's father, whose job Jem is now doing and who disappeared some years early, and Jem's chance discoveries lead him to investigate what really happened, what lies beyond the small patch of sea they inhabit, to understand why the old man is more interested in trawling the sea bed for plastic relics than contributing to their Sisyphean job.
The combination of imagination, linguistic precision and the theme of harsh struggle in an unforgiving environment makes it a little reminiscent of Cynan Jones, but the whole thing is rather impressive.
Set in a despoiled and bleak future world, Smith's hero Jem, who the narrator calls "the boy" lives on a platform in the North Sea with one other man "the old man" Greil. They are supposed to be there to maintain the old and increasingly unreliable generators on an offshore wind farm, and their only contact with the outside world is through the corrupt trader who occasionally visits in a supply ship.
The fourth character is Jem's father, whose job Jem is now doing and who disappeared some years early, and Jem's chance discoveries lead him to investigate what really happened, what lies beyond the small patch of sea they inhabit, to understand why the old man is more interested in trawling the sea bed for plastic relics than contributing to their Sisyphean job.
The combination of imagination, linguistic precision and the theme of harsh struggle in an unforgiving environment makes it a little reminiscent of Cynan Jones, but the whole thing is rather impressive.
November 7, 2021
Doggerland is the name given in the 1990s to an area of land, now submerged beneath the North Sea, which connected Great Britain to Continental Europe. Doggerland once extended to modern-day Denmark and far north to the Faroe Islands. It was a grassland roamed by mammoth, lion, red deer – and their human hunters – but melting ice turned it into an area of marshes and wetlands before it was finally and definitively claimed by the waves around 8,000 years ago. (Incidentally, Doggerland was recently in the news following exciting archaeological discoveries).
The idea of a submerged world resonates with mythical and poetic associations and, as a result, “Doggerland” lends itself well as the title of Ben Smith’s debut novel. The work, in fact, portrays an unspecified but seemingly not-so-distant future, where global warming and rising sea levels (possibly exacerbated by some other cataclysm) have eroded the coastline and brought to an end civilisation as we know it.
This strange, new world is made stranger still by the purposely constrained stage against which the narrative plays out. Smith focuses on two main characters, maintenance men on an enormous wind farm out in the North Sea, who lead a solitary existence on a decrepit rig amongst the rusting turbines. Although we are given their names, they are generally referred to in the novel as “the Boy” and “the Old Man”. Early on in the book, we are told that of course, the boy was not really a boy, any more than the old man was all that old; but the names are relative, and out of the grey, some kind of distinction was necessary. It’s a significant observation, because much of the novel’s undeniable power derives from a skilful use of a deliberately limited palette. The men’s life is marked by a sense of claustrophobia, the burden of an inescapable fate. The monotony of the routine is only broken by occasional visits of the Supply Boat and its talkative “Pilot”, who is the only link with what remains of the ‘mainland’. The struggle to keep the turbines working with limited resources becomes an image of the losing battle against the rising oceans, at once awesome and terrible in their vastness. The Romantic notion of the Sublime is given an environmentalist twist. One can smell the rust and smell the sea-salt.
Whilst the reader is made to share the ennui of the Boy and his mentor, Smith turns his story into a gripping one by making the most of the scant plot elements. For instance, we are told that the Boy was sent on the rig to replace his father, after the latter’s unsuccessful escape attempt. What exactly happened remains unclear but, together with the Boy, we glean some disturbing details along the way – in this regard, Smith takes a page out of dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction, and suggests that society has been taken over by some sort of totalitarian regime of whom the Boy’s father was, presumably, a victim. Part of the pleasure in reading this novel comes from trying to piece together an understanding of what exactly is happening on the mainland, considering that the perspective given to us is that of two people stranded in the middle of nowhere.
At times, Doggerland reminded me of Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From, which also describes a future marked by rising water levels. However, whereas Hunter’s vision, with its images of creation, birth and maternity, is ultimately a hopeful one, Smith’s is devoid of any feminine figure, suggesting a sterility in the human condition which can only lead to its annihilation. Doggerland is haunting in its bleakness:
The wind blows, the branches creak and turn. Somewhere in the metal forest, a tree slumps, groans but does not quite fall. The landscape holds fast, for a moment. For how long? It may be centuries. Barely worth mentioning in the lifetime of water...
More about this novel, with music to listen to at: https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...
The idea of a submerged world resonates with mythical and poetic associations and, as a result, “Doggerland” lends itself well as the title of Ben Smith’s debut novel. The work, in fact, portrays an unspecified but seemingly not-so-distant future, where global warming and rising sea levels (possibly exacerbated by some other cataclysm) have eroded the coastline and brought to an end civilisation as we know it.
This strange, new world is made stranger still by the purposely constrained stage against which the narrative plays out. Smith focuses on two main characters, maintenance men on an enormous wind farm out in the North Sea, who lead a solitary existence on a decrepit rig amongst the rusting turbines. Although we are given their names, they are generally referred to in the novel as “the Boy” and “the Old Man”. Early on in the book, we are told that of course, the boy was not really a boy, any more than the old man was all that old; but the names are relative, and out of the grey, some kind of distinction was necessary. It’s a significant observation, because much of the novel’s undeniable power derives from a skilful use of a deliberately limited palette. The men’s life is marked by a sense of claustrophobia, the burden of an inescapable fate. The monotony of the routine is only broken by occasional visits of the Supply Boat and its talkative “Pilot”, who is the only link with what remains of the ‘mainland’. The struggle to keep the turbines working with limited resources becomes an image of the losing battle against the rising oceans, at once awesome and terrible in their vastness. The Romantic notion of the Sublime is given an environmentalist twist. One can smell the rust and smell the sea-salt.
Whilst the reader is made to share the ennui of the Boy and his mentor, Smith turns his story into a gripping one by making the most of the scant plot elements. For instance, we are told that the Boy was sent on the rig to replace his father, after the latter’s unsuccessful escape attempt. What exactly happened remains unclear but, together with the Boy, we glean some disturbing details along the way – in this regard, Smith takes a page out of dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction, and suggests that society has been taken over by some sort of totalitarian regime of whom the Boy’s father was, presumably, a victim. Part of the pleasure in reading this novel comes from trying to piece together an understanding of what exactly is happening on the mainland, considering that the perspective given to us is that of two people stranded in the middle of nowhere.
At times, Doggerland reminded me of Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From, which also describes a future marked by rising water levels. However, whereas Hunter’s vision, with its images of creation, birth and maternity, is ultimately a hopeful one, Smith’s is devoid of any feminine figure, suggesting a sterility in the human condition which can only lead to its annihilation. Doggerland is haunting in its bleakness:
The wind blows, the branches creak and turn. Somewhere in the metal forest, a tree slumps, groans but does not quite fall. The landscape holds fast, for a moment. For how long? It may be centuries. Barely worth mentioning in the lifetime of water...
More about this novel, with music to listen to at: https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...
May 15, 2019
I love a dystopian fable, thus ‘Doggerland’ easily caught my attention. It has an intriguing and original setting: a vast decaying wind farm in the middle of the polluted North Sea. Amid the turbines is a rig where two repairmen live, one young and one old. They battle entropy with a single bag of tools and await supplies from the distant mainland. Although I found the whole book very atmospheric, it is also aggressively minimalist. Only four human beings are even mentioned in the text (all men) and events are strictly limited in number and spatial extent. There is also very little dialogue. While I respect the claustrophobic effect this has, it diminished my engagement with the narrative. Can it be that this young man really remembers so little of his past and has so little curiosity about the wider world? Why is the old man so mysterious? Do the pair of them ever get paid?
In today’s aggressively networked world, the monotony and lack of entertainment depicted in ‘Doggerland’ seem utterly extraordinary. To be so cut off the from the rest of the world strains credulity. The impact of this is to call into question the continued existence of said rest of the world, which is admittedly spooky. The scene in which the young man finds a pristine conference room at the top of a 150 ft turbine particularly stands out in this respect. Overall, though, I found 'Doggerland' a rather frustrating fable as I couldn’t identify what, if anything, was being allegorised. The environmental damage depicted was very literal, lacking context and meaning. I see analogies for capitalism practically everywhere, yet couldn't find one here. The spareness of the writing style made for a vivid yet intangible effect, leaving the reader without much substance to hang onto.
In today’s aggressively networked world, the monotony and lack of entertainment depicted in ‘Doggerland’ seem utterly extraordinary. To be so cut off the from the rest of the world strains credulity. The impact of this is to call into question the continued existence of said rest of the world, which is admittedly spooky. The scene in which the young man finds a pristine conference room at the top of a 150 ft turbine particularly stands out in this respect. Overall, though, I found 'Doggerland' a rather frustrating fable as I couldn’t identify what, if anything, was being allegorised. The environmental damage depicted was very literal, lacking context and meaning. I see analogies for capitalism practically everywhere, yet couldn't find one here. The spareness of the writing style made for a vivid yet intangible effect, leaving the reader without much substance to hang onto.
December 7, 2018
“His father’s breath had been loud in the small room. It had smelled smoky, or maybe more like dust. ‘I’ll get out,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll come back for you, ok?’ The boy remembered that; had always remembered it. And, for a time, he’d believed it too.”Ben Smith’s novel takes place on an offshore windfarm that stretches for thousands of acres – all that is visible from the main rig is row upon row of turbines as far as the eye can see. The Boy, who is no longer a boy, and the Old Man, whose age is difficult to determine, are charged with its maintenance. They live alone with only infrequent visits from a loquacious but corrupt boatman who brings them essential supplies.
The Boy’s father once worked on the farm but disappeared in puzzling circumstances. Consequently, the son was sent by the Company to fulfil his contract, but where he went remains a mystery and the Old Man is loath to discuss the matter.
Doggerland isn’t a setting conjured up by the author, but an area of land that once connected Great Britain to continental Europe. It is now submerged beneath North Sea after being flooded by rising sea levels around 6,500–6,200 BCE but was hitherto a rich habitat colonised by humans during the Mesolithic period. Something similar appears to be taking place on the mainland, though the protagonists haven’t returned home or seen the coastline since taking up their positions and know next to nothing about events in the wider world.
In a recent article I quoted from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale about societal changes happening so slowly they are almost imperceptible, or as she put it far more vividly: “in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” It strikes me this is what Smith has endeavoured to demonstrate in his novel. Civilization, once so progressive and dynamic, is now, much like this immense, expiring windfarm, corroded and all but unsalvageable.
Doggerland is a compelling, finely crafted novel about isolation, selflessness and hope in hopeless circumstances. An impressive debut.
Many thanks to 4th Estate for providing an advance review copy of this title.
November 19, 2018
My thanks to HarperCollins UK for an advanced copy via NetGalley of this debut novel from Ben Smith. On the publisher’s website, author Melissa Harrison describes Doggerland as “The Road meets Waiting for Godot: powerful, unforgettable, unique”.
The setting is the not-too-far-distant future on a vast offshore wind farm in the North Sea where two men (The Old Man and The Boy - they are named, but their names are rarely used) work as maintenance engineers. They are almost entirely alone and the boy is only there because his father, who previously worked there, disappeared mysteriously and The Company (whoever they may be) sent the boy to replace him. The relationship between the old man and the boy is a key element of the story as it develops. The old man scours the sea bed for lost things and talks repeatedly of how it all used to be dry land around them. The boy begins to search for evidence of his father. Suddenly, an opportunity for escape arises, but to say more would be to spoil the story.
Mixed in with the unfolding plot and character study, there are short chapters set in the past. These discuss how the land and sea have swapped places, how the sea is infinitely patient but wins the battles. These passages flow back in time and then come forward again, like the tide going in and out (or out and in, depending on which viewpoint you take).
The comparison with The Road comes from the setting which is the not-too-far-distant future when the sea has become a dead place and where our two protagonists live a lonely existence with only occasional visits from a supply ship. It is bleak, it is depressing:
“The cellophane creaked. The sun grated and the shiny surfaces grated but he didn’t move or get up. He’d stopped going outside. He’d stopped watching the water for things that might drift past. He’d stopped searching for lights. He’d stopped going down to check on the boat. For a long time, all he’d done was stare out at the horizon - the long, uninterrupted line of it. The openness almost made him dizzy. There was nothing to draw the eye, nothing to catch hold of, just the clouds rushing past, and the currents sweeping. Everything moved away from him out there…”
And the comparison with Waiting for Godot comes from there being two men waiting and waiting while not very much happens. However, this is less true than the bleakness, because there is action and plot movement through this story. There is also humour in the writing. You can’t go wrong with a good old English pun which comes when discussing the “homebrew” that the old man concocts from all kinds of bizarre (and dangerous) ingredients:
“The boy had once found him prying the letters off one of the rig’s warning signs and scattering them into the vats. He said the brew needed more character.”
A lot of the writing is poetic in nature. Smith imports a few words from other languages (I think that’s where they come from!) and is not, it seems, averse to making up some new words. “Gurrelly” may or may not be a typo, but whatever it is, it should stay in the book as it is a magnificent word! In the first few chapters, I kept highlighting passages and making a note that said “cinematic”: Smith’s writing draws vivid images in your mind and it is hard not to see some passages as clips from a movie. For example, try to read this without imagining a camera pulling away from the boy to expose the vastness of the sea around him:
“The boy tied off the line, straightened his back and blew lightly on his palms. ‘Good catch,’ he said.
Beside him, the thick steel support rose twenty metres to the rig. Above the rig’s squat rectangular housing, the blades of the nearest turbine turned slowly in the washed-out sky. All around, to every horizon, the blades of the wind farm turned.”
As the publisher’s website says, “Doggerland is a haunting and beautifully compelling story of loneliness and hope, nature and survival.” It’s a compelling read.
The setting is the not-too-far-distant future on a vast offshore wind farm in the North Sea where two men (The Old Man and The Boy - they are named, but their names are rarely used) work as maintenance engineers. They are almost entirely alone and the boy is only there because his father, who previously worked there, disappeared mysteriously and The Company (whoever they may be) sent the boy to replace him. The relationship between the old man and the boy is a key element of the story as it develops. The old man scours the sea bed for lost things and talks repeatedly of how it all used to be dry land around them. The boy begins to search for evidence of his father. Suddenly, an opportunity for escape arises, but to say more would be to spoil the story.
Mixed in with the unfolding plot and character study, there are short chapters set in the past. These discuss how the land and sea have swapped places, how the sea is infinitely patient but wins the battles. These passages flow back in time and then come forward again, like the tide going in and out (or out and in, depending on which viewpoint you take).
The comparison with The Road comes from the setting which is the not-too-far-distant future when the sea has become a dead place and where our two protagonists live a lonely existence with only occasional visits from a supply ship. It is bleak, it is depressing:
“The cellophane creaked. The sun grated and the shiny surfaces grated but he didn’t move or get up. He’d stopped going outside. He’d stopped watching the water for things that might drift past. He’d stopped searching for lights. He’d stopped going down to check on the boat. For a long time, all he’d done was stare out at the horizon - the long, uninterrupted line of it. The openness almost made him dizzy. There was nothing to draw the eye, nothing to catch hold of, just the clouds rushing past, and the currents sweeping. Everything moved away from him out there…”
And the comparison with Waiting for Godot comes from there being two men waiting and waiting while not very much happens. However, this is less true than the bleakness, because there is action and plot movement through this story. There is also humour in the writing. You can’t go wrong with a good old English pun which comes when discussing the “homebrew” that the old man concocts from all kinds of bizarre (and dangerous) ingredients:
“The boy had once found him prying the letters off one of the rig’s warning signs and scattering them into the vats. He said the brew needed more character.”
A lot of the writing is poetic in nature. Smith imports a few words from other languages (I think that’s where they come from!) and is not, it seems, averse to making up some new words. “Gurrelly” may or may not be a typo, but whatever it is, it should stay in the book as it is a magnificent word! In the first few chapters, I kept highlighting passages and making a note that said “cinematic”: Smith’s writing draws vivid images in your mind and it is hard not to see some passages as clips from a movie. For example, try to read this without imagining a camera pulling away from the boy to expose the vastness of the sea around him:
“The boy tied off the line, straightened his back and blew lightly on his palms. ‘Good catch,’ he said.
Beside him, the thick steel support rose twenty metres to the rig. Above the rig’s squat rectangular housing, the blades of the nearest turbine turned slowly in the washed-out sky. All around, to every horizon, the blades of the wind farm turned.”
As the publisher’s website says, “Doggerland is a haunting and beautifully compelling story of loneliness and hope, nature and survival.” It’s a compelling read.
January 24, 2019
This book is set in what appears to be a near-future world, where (possibly due to climate change) society has undergone some kind of breakdown. Two people – The Old Man (Griel) and The Boy (Jem) (“Of course, the boy was not really a boy, any more than the old man was all that old; but names are relative, and out in the grey some kind of distinction was necessary.”) live on-site as maintenance engineers on a massive and isolated North Sea windfarm – their only contact being a regular service boat from The Company (their employer and seemingly one of the few remaining organizations in the dysfunctional society) crewed by a rapacious pilot who exploits his lifeline status and access to resources to profit from trading goods between the two and the other outposts he services.
Both The Old Man and the Boy and the boy concentrate primarily on their routine of maintenance duties despite the clear decay over time of the windfarm and the lack of any real incentive to keep it operating other than a desire to give their existence a sense of purpose
But both are also driven by memories and an attempt to extract some meaning from the past.
For The Old Man it is the distant past – he dredges the sea to extract prehistoric artefacts from the eponymous land mass long ago submerged under the North Sea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland)
For The Boy it is a search for his father – previously The Old Man’s partner, and whose place he is required to take
The plot development is deliberately very limited – The Boy finding a little more about his Father and having to decide whether he follows his desire to escape to the open seas.
This novel has been compared, by Melissa Harrison (author of All Among The Barley) to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (which I thought an excellent book) – the comparisons being clear, my review of that book describing it as: “a man and a boy trudge across a post apocalyptic America …. with an ash (and corpse) ridden landscape and occasional wrecks of houses or cars long stripped of anything useful. They are heading for the coast surviving on scavenging.”
This book shares with “The Road” the sparseness and bleakness of the prose, with the brutality and futility of much of what has happened and the world that has resulted from it, just occasionally offset by glimpses of empathy and sympathy between the characters and a tenuous sense of hope.
The book also has a front cover recommendation from Jon McGregor worth quoting in full:
Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13 was set in a Peak District village, and measured the how the quotidian dramas of a large cast of villagers played out against the rhythmic seasons of village life and the natural world, while time continues to pass incessantly.
And there is much in common with this book – a smaller cast of only two but the same rhythmic quality as The Old Man and The Boy carry out their regular routines – the backdrop here being a combination of the harsh natural world of waves, wind and weather and a man-made world of turbines. And it has the same sense of different timescales playing out – here on a much longer time frame as occasional chapters sketch out a high level view of how Doggerland emerged from and later gradually succumbed to the sea and of course the clear implication that modern society has effectively succumbed in the same way
The other author that I was reminded of though was the WWII naval stories of Douglas Reeman(as well as the brilliant Alistair MacLean’s debut HMS Ulysses – just as those books are dominated by lengthy expositions of naval action featuring copious use of naval terms, passages which I felt I never comprehended and which spoilt my enjoyment, I found myself here skipping large chunks of text around nacelles, engine components and boat maintenance. And ultimately that dampened my enjoyment of the book.
My thanks to Harper Collins for an ARC via NetGalley.
Both The Old Man and the Boy and the boy concentrate primarily on their routine of maintenance duties despite the clear decay over time of the windfarm and the lack of any real incentive to keep it operating other than a desire to give their existence a sense of purpose
“The pilot’s eyes flicked from the old man to the boy and back again. ‘I admire it, I really do. The ability to compartmentalize. To shut things away and forget about them …’ The old man put his mug down on the table but still held it tightly. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ‘… to just carry on as you always have. With such certainty, such confidence. It really is—’”
But both are also driven by memories and an attempt to extract some meaning from the past.
For The Old Man it is the distant past – he dredges the sea to extract prehistoric artefacts from the eponymous land mass long ago submerged under the North Sea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland)
“He would talk about homes and settlements –a place that had flooded thousands of years ago. He would talk about woods and hills and rivers, and he would trade away crate-loads of turbine parts for maps that showed the seabed as if it were land, surveys from before the farm was built –the paper thin and flaky as rust –that described the density and make-up of the ground beneath the water. Every resupply he would trade for a new chart, or a new trawling tool, and then he would reposition his nets, rewrite his coordinates, and start the whole bloody process again.”
For The Boy it is a search for his father – previously The Old Man’s partner, and whose place he is required to take
“Unfortunate. That was what they’d said. It was unfortunate that his father had chosen to renege on his contract. He couldn’t remember who had spoken, or how many people were in that brightly lit room. All he could remember was that the veneer on the desk had been peeling away at one corner. He’d thought about what glue he would have used if he’d had to stick it back down. They’d explained things very carefully. How the boy’s position in the Company was affected. How the term of service had to be fulfilled and, as the only next of kin, this duty fell to him. It was unfortunate, they’d said, but it was policy. They went over the legal criteria and the job specifications, the duties and securities guaranteed. But they did not explain the one thing the boy most wanted to know. ‘What does “renege” mean?’”
The plot development is deliberately very limited – The Boy finding a little more about his Father and having to decide whether he follows his desire to escape to the open seas.
This novel has been compared, by Melissa Harrison (author of All Among The Barley) to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (which I thought an excellent book) – the comparisons being clear, my review of that book describing it as: “a man and a boy trudge across a post apocalyptic America …. with an ash (and corpse) ridden landscape and occasional wrecks of houses or cars long stripped of anything useful. They are heading for the coast surviving on scavenging.”
This book shares with “The Road” the sparseness and bleakness of the prose, with the brutality and futility of much of what has happened and the world that has resulted from it, just occasionally offset by glimpses of empathy and sympathy between the characters and a tenuous sense of hope.
The book also has a front cover recommendation from Jon McGregor worth quoting in full:
In Doggerland, Ben Smith has created a vision of the future in which the world ends with neither a bang nor a whimper but just rusts gradually into the sea. I found it both terrifying and hugely enjoyable, as well as tremendously moving. Ben Smith's writing is incredibly precise; working with a restricted palette of steel greys and flaking blues, he paints the boundaried seascape with vivid detail. This is a story about men and fathers, the faint consolation of routine, and the undying hope of finding out what lies beyond the horizon. I absolutely loved it’
Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13 was set in a Peak District village, and measured the how the quotidian dramas of a large cast of villagers played out against the rhythmic seasons of village life and the natural world, while time continues to pass incessantly.
And there is much in common with this book – a smaller cast of only two but the same rhythmic quality as The Old Man and The Boy carry out their regular routines – the backdrop here being a combination of the harsh natural world of waves, wind and weather and a man-made world of turbines. And it has the same sense of different timescales playing out – here on a much longer time frame as occasional chapters sketch out a high level view of how Doggerland emerged from and later gradually succumbed to the sea and of course the clear implication that modern society has effectively succumbed in the same way
When did this happen? Maybe centuries ago. Nothing more than a blink in the lifetime of water. But they are here. And so, water continues its work –of levelling, of pressing at edges, of constantly seeking a return to an even surface, a steady state. It repeats its mantra: solidity is nothing but an interruption to continuous flow, an obstacle to be overcome, an imbalance to be rectified. It finds its way through cracks and rivets. It scrapes away metal, millimetre by millimetre. It chips paint and crumbles rubber seals. It finds new ways to make things bloom. Sometimes, it finds its work undone. A crack is filled, a panel is reinforced. But the water is patient. It’s been doing this for a long time. The wind blows, the branches creak and turn. Somewhere in the metal forest, a tree slumps, groans, but does not quite fall. The landscape holds fast, for a moment. For how long? It may be centuries. Barely worth mentioning in the lifetime of water.
The other author that I was reminded of though was the WWII naval stories of Douglas Reeman(as well as the brilliant Alistair MacLean’s debut HMS Ulysses – just as those books are dominated by lengthy expositions of naval action featuring copious use of naval terms, passages which I felt I never comprehended and which spoilt my enjoyment, I found myself here skipping large chunks of text around nacelles, engine components and boat maintenance. And ultimately that dampened my enjoyment of the book.
My thanks to Harper Collins for an ARC via NetGalley.
June 5, 2019
This debut novel has just two main characters: ‘the old man’ and ‘the boy’ (who’s not really a boy anymore), who are stationed on an enormous offshore wind farm. The distance from the present day is indicated in slyly throwaway comments like “The boy didn’t know what potatoes were.” Smith poses questions about responsibility and sacrifice, and comments on modern addictions and a culture of disposability. He has certainly captured something of the British literary zeitgeist. From page to page, though, Doggerland grew tiresome for me. There is a lot of maritime vocabulary and technical detail about supplies and maintenance. The location is vague and claustrophobic, the pace is usually slow, and there are repetitive scenes and few conversations. To an extent, this comes with the territory. But it cannot be ignored that this is an entirely male world. Fans of the themes and style of The Old Man and the Sea and The Road will get on best with Smith’s writing. I most appreciated the moments of Beckettian humor in the dialogue and the poetic interludes that represent human history as a blip in the grand scheme of things.
See my full review at Shiny New Books.
See my full review at Shiny New Books.
May 10, 2019
[Updated review a day after – appreciating the novel a little more after sleeping on it!]
It took me a while to realize what’s making me uneasy about Doggerland: it is almost completely (but deliberately) devoid of emotions. There is nothing but metal, water, rust, dirt, broken turbines, and disgusting tinned food like the vegetables the boy protagonist eats: “gelatinous carbohydrates moulded into the shape of things that once grew. They were pallid and starchy, and left a powdery residue that coated the tongue and teeth.”
The novel has a very distinctive setting and premise: a boy and an old man fixing turbines at a wind farm in the North Sea, living in very cruel conditions on a rig. They’re isolated from the rest of the world besides a pilot who brings them food and equipment every now and then. Some references to the “Company” and Chinese. While the world beyond these rows of turbines remains a mystery, the historical “Doggerland” in the title of the novel, combined with the modern wind farm setting, signals a dystopian vision of the Anthropocene. Thank you Wikipedia:
Doggerland was an area of land, now submerged beneath the southern North Sea, that connected Great Britain to continental Europe. It was flooded by rising sea levels around 6,500–6,200 BC. Geological surveys have suggested that it stretched from Britain's east coast to the Netherlands and the western coasts of Germany and the peninsula of Jutland.
So, Smith’s alternative Doggerland reminds us what sort of a reality we may face as the sea levels rise today, in addition to being set in an area that has symbolic resonance in these Brexit times. The author is a university lecturer specializing in e.g. environmental literature and handles the topic knowledgeably – there’s a list of sources on Doggerland at the back of the book. Words like “nacelle,” “circuitry,” and “cleat” appear time and again as Smith portrays the boy sailing in his boat and fixing turbines in almost repulsively realistic detail.
In the end, it was hard to connect with the novel. While the atmosphere is indeed distinctive, I found the prose a tad too straightforward for my personal liking, so I ended up speeding through some sections as I knew I would only miss detailed descriptions of how to fix a turbine. On one hand, I appreciate the total annihilation of the inner world of characters: some environmentally conscious authors like Richard Powers have pointed out how the average literary fiction novel deals mainly with the interpersonal drama and the psyches involved, while the environmental destruction we see around us calls for what Powers call “level three stories” depicting “the battle between people and non-people.” (The idea of three levels of complexity sound a lot like what Braden R. Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz talk about in The Techno-Human Condition – I wonder if Powers has read that book.) I assume Smith is thinking similarly in writing Doggerland and I appreciate that heavy focus on materiality on a theoretical level, but its execution in story form didn’t quite do it for me. In other words, it didn’t quite “make my brain fizz” with ideas, besides the interlude chapters which nicely depict the way natural forces created and uncreated the original Doggerland.
It took me a while to realize what’s making me uneasy about Doggerland: it is almost completely (but deliberately) devoid of emotions. There is nothing but metal, water, rust, dirt, broken turbines, and disgusting tinned food like the vegetables the boy protagonist eats: “gelatinous carbohydrates moulded into the shape of things that once grew. They were pallid and starchy, and left a powdery residue that coated the tongue and teeth.”
The novel has a very distinctive setting and premise: a boy and an old man fixing turbines at a wind farm in the North Sea, living in very cruel conditions on a rig. They’re isolated from the rest of the world besides a pilot who brings them food and equipment every now and then. Some references to the “Company” and Chinese. While the world beyond these rows of turbines remains a mystery, the historical “Doggerland” in the title of the novel, combined with the modern wind farm setting, signals a dystopian vision of the Anthropocene. Thank you Wikipedia:
Doggerland was an area of land, now submerged beneath the southern North Sea, that connected Great Britain to continental Europe. It was flooded by rising sea levels around 6,500–6,200 BC. Geological surveys have suggested that it stretched from Britain's east coast to the Netherlands and the western coasts of Germany and the peninsula of Jutland.
So, Smith’s alternative Doggerland reminds us what sort of a reality we may face as the sea levels rise today, in addition to being set in an area that has symbolic resonance in these Brexit times. The author is a university lecturer specializing in e.g. environmental literature and handles the topic knowledgeably – there’s a list of sources on Doggerland at the back of the book. Words like “nacelle,” “circuitry,” and “cleat” appear time and again as Smith portrays the boy sailing in his boat and fixing turbines in almost repulsively realistic detail.
In the end, it was hard to connect with the novel. While the atmosphere is indeed distinctive, I found the prose a tad too straightforward for my personal liking, so I ended up speeding through some sections as I knew I would only miss detailed descriptions of how to fix a turbine. On one hand, I appreciate the total annihilation of the inner world of characters: some environmentally conscious authors like Richard Powers have pointed out how the average literary fiction novel deals mainly with the interpersonal drama and the psyches involved, while the environmental destruction we see around us calls for what Powers call “level three stories” depicting “the battle between people and non-people.” (The idea of three levels of complexity sound a lot like what Braden R. Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz talk about in The Techno-Human Condition – I wonder if Powers has read that book.) I assume Smith is thinking similarly in writing Doggerland and I appreciate that heavy focus on materiality on a theoretical level, but its execution in story form didn’t quite do it for me. In other words, it didn’t quite “make my brain fizz” with ideas, besides the interlude chapters which nicely depict the way natural forces created and uncreated the original Doggerland.
February 16, 2020
In the North Sea, a wind farm stretches for thousands of acres; the coastline, or what remains of it is far from here. Two men are responsible for maintaining all of these turbines, one younger is called the boy, though he has outgrown that title now. The other is the Old Man, who has been there for almost longer than he can remember.
Their work is continual, changing batteries, cogs, bearings and motors and moving from their accommodation rig to the turbines that need repairs. Every now and again they are visited by the pilot who brings tinned food for them and hopes to trade things. The work is mundane and tedious, the Old Man for amusement trawls the sea to collect the things are being washed past or to bring us ancient remains from Doggerland far below the service.
The boy was sent there by the company to replace his father who worked there before him and who vanished one day. He has many questions about why and where he went, but there are no answers forthcoming from the Old Man. Until one day he finds a clue that he has been looking for as to what happened to his father.
This dystopian novel set in a seascape that is harsh and utterly unforgiving. It has a haunting melancholy about it as the sea gradually claims back to turbines and it is written with a sparse precision that allows you to fill in the gaps in your mind. The three characters are strong, yet their feelings and thoughts are elusive. I really liked the world that he has created. I liked the way that he has linked it back to the ancient land that stood beneath the waves that still reveals itself every now and again. Yet it seems to be the last throw of the dice building this vast farm of wind turbines in response to some unknown climate disaster and yet it has come to nothing as the civilisation that it seems to have mostly gone. There are several threads in the storyline that were not really concluded and yet I didn’t mind that, as it portrays the ambiguity and complexity of this bleak future world. It reminded me of Stillicide by Cynan Jones which I read last year. It could almost be set in the same world. 4.5 stars
Their work is continual, changing batteries, cogs, bearings and motors and moving from their accommodation rig to the turbines that need repairs. Every now and again they are visited by the pilot who brings tinned food for them and hopes to trade things. The work is mundane and tedious, the Old Man for amusement trawls the sea to collect the things are being washed past or to bring us ancient remains from Doggerland far below the service.
The boy was sent there by the company to replace his father who worked there before him and who vanished one day. He has many questions about why and where he went, but there are no answers forthcoming from the Old Man. Until one day he finds a clue that he has been looking for as to what happened to his father.
This dystopian novel set in a seascape that is harsh and utterly unforgiving. It has a haunting melancholy about it as the sea gradually claims back to turbines and it is written with a sparse precision that allows you to fill in the gaps in your mind. The three characters are strong, yet their feelings and thoughts are elusive. I really liked the world that he has created. I liked the way that he has linked it back to the ancient land that stood beneath the waves that still reveals itself every now and again. Yet it seems to be the last throw of the dice building this vast farm of wind turbines in response to some unknown climate disaster and yet it has come to nothing as the civilisation that it seems to have mostly gone. There are several threads in the storyline that were not really concluded and yet I didn’t mind that, as it portrays the ambiguity and complexity of this bleak future world. It reminded me of Stillicide by Cynan Jones which I read last year. It could almost be set in the same world. 4.5 stars
November 15, 2018
Thanks to NetGalley for this book. I really wanted to like this book more than I did! I loved the premise and the first couple of chapters, but then I felt it lost its way slightly... There were huge chunks of descriptive prose describing the turbines and their inner workings that I really struggled to follow and visualise, however I realise this could be my failing, but it hindered my enjoyment of the book.
I liked the relationship between the Old Man and Young Boy but felt I wanted more from them. I wanted to know more about them and I enjoyed their dialogue.
The imagery it created was great but I wanted to know more about the context and how they ended up there etc... I realise the lack of this information was the authors choice, but I felt that had more context been provided it would have really deepened the story and its relationships.
I felt the flashback paragraphs weren’t needed and didn’t deepen the narrative.
I would certainly read something else by this author however as despite my negative comments I enjoyed some of it and liked the style in some places.
I liked the relationship between the Old Man and Young Boy but felt I wanted more from them. I wanted to know more about them and I enjoyed their dialogue.
The imagery it created was great but I wanted to know more about the context and how they ended up there etc... I realise the lack of this information was the authors choice, but I felt that had more context been provided it would have really deepened the story and its relationships.
I felt the flashback paragraphs weren’t needed and didn’t deepen the narrative.
I would certainly read something else by this author however as despite my negative comments I enjoyed some of it and liked the style in some places.
February 14, 2019
What a wonderful novel. An old man and a boy live their lives on a rig in the north sea, repairing turbines on a giant wind farm. An ecological event has seen the world ripped of its resources, only plastic and electricity seem in rich health.
Their days are mundane: travelling around the farm in their rechargeable boat, carrying out repairs for 'The Company', keeping the blades turning, eating bland manufactured food, playing pool, dredging the seabed for useless items. All there is, apart from the water, is their clipped conversation and the quarterly visit from a supply boat.
The boy is there because his father deserted his post and he has been sent to fulfill the contract. The old man has resigned himself to this repetitive, pointless life. Until the boy plans their escape...
Smith's prose is utterly exquisite, spare as Cynan Jones, with dialogue straight out of Beckett. And the story is told with such restraint and beauty that is drags at your heart and your gut when things go south. It's a magnificent novel and should go on to win many awards this year.
Their days are mundane: travelling around the farm in their rechargeable boat, carrying out repairs for 'The Company', keeping the blades turning, eating bland manufactured food, playing pool, dredging the seabed for useless items. All there is, apart from the water, is their clipped conversation and the quarterly visit from a supply boat.
The boy is there because his father deserted his post and he has been sent to fulfill the contract. The old man has resigned himself to this repetitive, pointless life. Until the boy plans their escape...
Smith's prose is utterly exquisite, spare as Cynan Jones, with dialogue straight out of Beckett. And the story is told with such restraint and beauty that is drags at your heart and your gut when things go south. It's a magnificent novel and should go on to win many awards this year.
December 21, 2025
This book was sold to me as post-apocalyptic fiction, a genre of literature I have a soft spot for, and so I decided to read it on that basis; but I think it would be more accurate to say that the book tries to be more Beckett than Wyndham. And I would say that it fails on both counts (then again, Beckett can be very bleak and boring too so maybe it succeeded).
The story follows two characters (see, very Beckett), a young man (referred to as the boy) and an old man (referred to as the old man) who live on a rig in the north sea and are tasked with making repairs and maintaining the various wind turbines. There are a great many chapters that detail these repairs, fixing malfunctioning equipment, electrics, the housings and flaps and hinges and so on. And there are a great many chapters that explore the two men's character and frosty relationship. Meanwhile there is a (tiresome) ongoing thread relating to the boy's father who disappeared and left them to live this life. I found none of this enjoyable and struggled through with little reward for my efforts. The post-apocalyptic element is non-existent and the only clue to its possibility is when the supply boat arrives with very unappetising and dry packages of food. Why would it be like this unless it's some unpleasant future? But that's all you get (plus some mention of a mysterious corporation). Besides, it's redundant because the setting isn't really that relevant. This is a story of bleakness and two men's descent into paranoia and... honestly, you'd be better off just watching Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse instead. The book is too dull to be post-apocalyptic and too staid and prosaic to be a Beckett-esque exploration of existential torment. It's just rather middling.
Then we have banal chapters that serve as a historical account of the Doggerland area, its journey across thousands of years as a landmass that would later be consumed by the sea. These (and I cannot stress this enough) add absolutely nothing whatsoever! As soon as I read the first one, I knew they were a smug attempt at indulgent filler.
I understand what Smith was trying to do here, but it really doesn't work. To me, the book was dry and bland and never accomplished any great existential quality. The writing wasn't challenging enough for that kind of thing. And it failed miserably as post-apocalyptic fiction too, it being too immersed in the notion of exploring something which touched on the tedium of humanity and the nightmare of isolation. Selling this on the basis of post-apocalyptic fiction was misleading and they would have been better off promoting it as literary and existential (I suspect they knew the former was an easier sell). I found the whole thing uninteresting, slow, self-congratulatory, and a slog. Nowhere near Beckett's standard and not even a fun, disposable post-apocalyptic narrative to make up for it.
The story follows two characters (see, very Beckett), a young man (referred to as the boy) and an old man (referred to as the old man) who live on a rig in the north sea and are tasked with making repairs and maintaining the various wind turbines. There are a great many chapters that detail these repairs, fixing malfunctioning equipment, electrics, the housings and flaps and hinges and so on. And there are a great many chapters that explore the two men's character and frosty relationship. Meanwhile there is a (tiresome) ongoing thread relating to the boy's father who disappeared and left them to live this life. I found none of this enjoyable and struggled through with little reward for my efforts. The post-apocalyptic element is non-existent and the only clue to its possibility is when the supply boat arrives with very unappetising and dry packages of food. Why would it be like this unless it's some unpleasant future? But that's all you get (plus some mention of a mysterious corporation). Besides, it's redundant because the setting isn't really that relevant. This is a story of bleakness and two men's descent into paranoia and... honestly, you'd be better off just watching Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse instead. The book is too dull to be post-apocalyptic and too staid and prosaic to be a Beckett-esque exploration of existential torment. It's just rather middling.
Then we have banal chapters that serve as a historical account of the Doggerland area, its journey across thousands of years as a landmass that would later be consumed by the sea. These (and I cannot stress this enough) add absolutely nothing whatsoever! As soon as I read the first one, I knew they were a smug attempt at indulgent filler.
I understand what Smith was trying to do here, but it really doesn't work. To me, the book was dry and bland and never accomplished any great existential quality. The writing wasn't challenging enough for that kind of thing. And it failed miserably as post-apocalyptic fiction too, it being too immersed in the notion of exploring something which touched on the tedium of humanity and the nightmare of isolation. Selling this on the basis of post-apocalyptic fiction was misleading and they would have been better off promoting it as literary and existential (I suspect they knew the former was an easier sell). I found the whole thing uninteresting, slow, self-congratulatory, and a slog. Nowhere near Beckett's standard and not even a fun, disposable post-apocalyptic narrative to make up for it.
October 23, 2018
I can’t better Jon McGregor’s contribution to the publisher’s blurb for this book and take the liberty of reproducing it here.
In Doggerland, Ben Smith has created a vision of the future in which the world ends with neither a bang nor a whimper but just rusts gradually into the sea. I found it both terrifying and hugely enjoyable, as well as tremendously moving. Ben Smith's writing is incredibly precise; working with a restricted palette of steel greys and flaking blues, he paints the boundaried seascape with vivid detail. This is a story about men and fathers, the faint consolation of routine, and the undying hope of finding out what lies beyond the horizon. I absolutely loved it. Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13
I also shy away from describing the plot. So little action takes place that to reveal any of it would be to spoil others’ experience of the book. The author’s outstanding creation for me is the atmosphere of the story - claustrophobic, despite its setting, and fraught with danger. There are only three characters and a degree of mystery surrounds all of them - how did they end up on the turbine farm?, what lives did they lead before? And, of course, central to it all, what lives could they live outside the farm?, what is out there beyond the last turbine?
The title Doggerland prompts more questions than it answers. I was aware of the area of dry land that used to connect Britain to Europe before it was flooded when the ice retreated and that now lies under the North Sea. I was aware that prehistoric artefacts have long been discovered off the British and Dutch coasts, and reading this story led to me spending a happy hour looking into it all online. I loved the way the author amalgamates these and other hints of ancient events into a futuristic novel about a world undergoing a slow but relentless apocalypse, and maybe renewal - really fascinating and thought-provoking.
Highly recommended.
In Doggerland, Ben Smith has created a vision of the future in which the world ends with neither a bang nor a whimper but just rusts gradually into the sea. I found it both terrifying and hugely enjoyable, as well as tremendously moving. Ben Smith's writing is incredibly precise; working with a restricted palette of steel greys and flaking blues, he paints the boundaried seascape with vivid detail. This is a story about men and fathers, the faint consolation of routine, and the undying hope of finding out what lies beyond the horizon. I absolutely loved it. Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13
I also shy away from describing the plot. So little action takes place that to reveal any of it would be to spoil others’ experience of the book. The author’s outstanding creation for me is the atmosphere of the story - claustrophobic, despite its setting, and fraught with danger. There are only three characters and a degree of mystery surrounds all of them - how did they end up on the turbine farm?, what lives did they lead before? And, of course, central to it all, what lives could they live outside the farm?, what is out there beyond the last turbine?
The title Doggerland prompts more questions than it answers. I was aware of the area of dry land that used to connect Britain to Europe before it was flooded when the ice retreated and that now lies under the North Sea. I was aware that prehistoric artefacts have long been discovered off the British and Dutch coasts, and reading this story led to me spending a happy hour looking into it all online. I loved the way the author amalgamates these and other hints of ancient events into a futuristic novel about a world undergoing a slow but relentless apocalypse, and maybe renewal - really fascinating and thought-provoking.
Highly recommended.
February 10, 2021
This was an original, moving and complex human story. It centres on a young man (called 'the boy' throughout the narrative) whose job it is to look after and repair the turbines on a wind farm.
His colleague, called 'the old man' in the story is his only living companion and link to the outside world but isn't forthcoming with more clarifications about where he is from and why they are both stuck out there. The occasional visit of an unpleasant pilot who supplies them with provisions also keeps the boy's questions unanswered. All he knows is that he has taken his deceased father's place in this lonely bleak place and is expected to remain at the off shore site repairing turbines under challenging conditions indefinitely. This creates a mysterious and claustrophobic atmosphere in which the boy's increased need to investigate his father’s death makes him venture out into the open sea by himself one day.
It is a memorable read and I was fascinated by the exploration of life far away from civilisation, the scenes of survival in a harsh setting and the loneliness of living in a confined space at times even felt reminiscent of our lockdown times, albeit much, much worse of course. There was also a sense that an irreversible climate change had taken place which made the men's daily routines of repairing corroding parts pointless and their search for meaningful tasks futile. It's a thought-provoking read and a relevant speculative mediation on what we need to save before it is too late.
His colleague, called 'the old man' in the story is his only living companion and link to the outside world but isn't forthcoming with more clarifications about where he is from and why they are both stuck out there. The occasional visit of an unpleasant pilot who supplies them with provisions also keeps the boy's questions unanswered. All he knows is that he has taken his deceased father's place in this lonely bleak place and is expected to remain at the off shore site repairing turbines under challenging conditions indefinitely. This creates a mysterious and claustrophobic atmosphere in which the boy's increased need to investigate his father’s death makes him venture out into the open sea by himself one day.
It is a memorable read and I was fascinated by the exploration of life far away from civilisation, the scenes of survival in a harsh setting and the loneliness of living in a confined space at times even felt reminiscent of our lockdown times, albeit much, much worse of course. There was also a sense that an irreversible climate change had taken place which made the men's daily routines of repairing corroding parts pointless and their search for meaningful tasks futile. It's a thought-provoking read and a relevant speculative mediation on what we need to save before it is too late.
June 27, 2019
Set in a future time where environmental catastrophe has apparently flooded large areas of previously-inhabited land, a boy, Jem, is sent to work as maintenance crew on a large offshore wind farm to replace his father who has 'reneged on his contract' and disappeared. Jem works with an old man (Greil) who tells him little or nothing about his father and what happened to him. But aside from their monotonous existence trying to maintain the turbines with few or no spare parts and awaiting the next supply ship bringing tinned and processed foodstuffs and less and less spares, Jem continues to dream about his missing father who had promised to return for him....
A bleak yet moving read about two characters at the end of their respective tethers where ultimately Jem's humanity condemns him - 8/10.
A bleak yet moving read about two characters at the end of their respective tethers where ultimately Jem's humanity condemns him - 8/10.
April 8, 2019
This wonderfully inventive debut novel with its themes of loneliness and hope, environment and survival, can be enjoyed on several levels; from a Robinson Crusoe type adventure, to an awareness of the imminent dangers facing the planet as the climate changes and our use of plastic. Set on a wind farm in the near future it’s not a difficult cast list to get familiar with, The Boy, no longer a boy as he was when he arrived at the farm, The Old Man, and the Pilot who arrives every few months with supplies.
It begins slowly, reflecting the chronic tedium life on the rig, but creeps up on you to a stage when it becomes a page-turner and hardly possible to put down. It’s a novel for which it pays to ignore the blurb, it’s inaccurate and certainly doesn’t do the book justice (I don’t think it’s major theme is escape). Seek to know no more about the plot.. It’s much better to know something about the place that Doggerland was, in the year 6,000 BC, and to keep an open mind so as to form your own view about such questions as what might have happened, why the Old Man and Boy are there, how far into the future is it, what lies beyond the last turbine?
As with the best novels there are memorable scenes, powerful images that could hardly be more relevant to our current environmental concerns; the Boy discovering coffee and the inevitable paper cups it comes in, and when the storm hits, being stand-out for me.
It begins slowly, reflecting the chronic tedium life on the rig, but creeps up on you to a stage when it becomes a page-turner and hardly possible to put down. It’s a novel for which it pays to ignore the blurb, it’s inaccurate and certainly doesn’t do the book justice (I don’t think it’s major theme is escape). Seek to know no more about the plot.. It’s much better to know something about the place that Doggerland was, in the year 6,000 BC, and to keep an open mind so as to form your own view about such questions as what might have happened, why the Old Man and Boy are there, how far into the future is it, what lies beyond the last turbine?
As with the best novels there are memorable scenes, powerful images that could hardly be more relevant to our current environmental concerns; the Boy discovering coffee and the inevitable paper cups it comes in, and when the storm hits, being stand-out for me.
May 12, 2019
This book is set on a wind farm some time in the future, or in an alternative world possibly - it's hard to be sure and this is never actually confirmed. In this place the water level eventually rises so that there is very little land left; the land the wind farm was built on is partially submerged.
Two men - one younger and one older - are employed by a company to keep the farm going. They live on a rig and travel around on a boat. The only contact they have with the outside world is a supply ship that comes now and then; otherwise, they are alone. The rest of the world and even the past is somewhat of a mystery, particularly to the boy who doesn't remember anything much beyond working on the rig. He does know that his father used to work on the farm, but disappeared and Jem, the boy, was taken there to work in his place until the contract was fulfilled. Jem doesn't know what happened to his father but constantly wonders about where he might have gone, and how he escaped the desolate wind farm.
This book is very strange and detached. The extreme dystopian setting means that life for the characters is very different to anything we would experience, and so the story is unusual and unpredictable.
The plot is slow-moving because obviously nothing much happens out on the farm. This is more of a thought-provoking and emotional piece about family and commitment, and what different people will do to escape from or face up to their responsibilities.
I wouldn't say I had a strong feeling of enjoyment from the book, but it is certainly well written and I was kept interested until the end. It did dwindle a little in the middle, perhaps because the author had a lot of mood and background to build into the story.
I honestly don't know how to categorise this one, or whether I would recommend it or not. It's a strange book. I think I probably did like it, but I don't know if anyone else would or not. Perhaps one for those who enjoy philosophical and contemporary fiction, bordering on sci-fi.
Two men - one younger and one older - are employed by a company to keep the farm going. They live on a rig and travel around on a boat. The only contact they have with the outside world is a supply ship that comes now and then; otherwise, they are alone. The rest of the world and even the past is somewhat of a mystery, particularly to the boy who doesn't remember anything much beyond working on the rig. He does know that his father used to work on the farm, but disappeared and Jem, the boy, was taken there to work in his place until the contract was fulfilled. Jem doesn't know what happened to his father but constantly wonders about where he might have gone, and how he escaped the desolate wind farm.
This book is very strange and detached. The extreme dystopian setting means that life for the characters is very different to anything we would experience, and so the story is unusual and unpredictable.
The plot is slow-moving because obviously nothing much happens out on the farm. This is more of a thought-provoking and emotional piece about family and commitment, and what different people will do to escape from or face up to their responsibilities.
I wouldn't say I had a strong feeling of enjoyment from the book, but it is certainly well written and I was kept interested until the end. It did dwindle a little in the middle, perhaps because the author had a lot of mood and background to build into the story.
I honestly don't know how to categorise this one, or whether I would recommend it or not. It's a strange book. I think I probably did like it, but I don't know if anyone else would or not. Perhaps one for those who enjoy philosophical and contemporary fiction, bordering on sci-fi.
June 15, 2020
I could stretch my rating to maybe a 3.5 but feel I've been miss-sold
Cover blurb making comparisons to Beckett and Ballard are way off the mark and were only put forward because of slight scenario similarities. Stylistically this is far more conventional and in the end I found myself skipping quickly through for lack of meat
Cover blurb making comparisons to Beckett and Ballard are way off the mark and were only put forward because of slight scenario similarities. Stylistically this is far more conventional and in the end I found myself skipping quickly through for lack of meat
April 27, 2020
4,5.This was a revelation. Wow. Such amazing prose, subtle, thoughtful, sparse but full of wonders. 5 star setting. I could feel the cold and the rain and the wind while sitting in the sun, and keep wanting to go inside and snuggle up.
May 31, 2025
I thought this was a terrific novel! After my bad experience with the last dystopian fiction I read, Doggerland had all I look for and value in such stories.
This one takes place, in a near or distant future from our present, on the North Sea above the sunken continent of Doggerland that once formed a land bridge between Great Britain and Denmark.
There are two characters, mainly referred to as the Boy and the Old Man, though they do have names, Jem and Griel. They live on a crumbling deep sea rig in the midst of a vast wind turbine farm. Their accommodations, their means of survival, even their relationship is presented in the most virtuosic description of bleakness and discomfort I have ever read. Simultaneously I was all in for the Boy, who comes to matter as a character of considerable heroism. That combination of setting and character strikes me as a remarkable and brilliant achievement.
Most of the book describes—you could say, page after page after page—of repairs and maintenance of the turbines, the taking apart and putting back together of mechanical things, being cold and uncomfortable, eating nasty and indeterminate tinned food, the weather and the sea. How was this not boring? How could it be so engaging, riveting at times? As the book winds to its conclusion, it is increasingly gripping.
I have told you everything and nothing about the book. I have not mentioned the resonances—to time, mortality, climate change, to progress (or not!), to resilience and what a human being really needs to live. Comparisons to Beckett and William Golding are not amiss. Doggerland will sit comfortably on the shelf with other favorites, The Inheritors by Golding and The Wall by Marlen Haushofer.
This one takes place, in a near or distant future from our present, on the North Sea above the sunken continent of Doggerland that once formed a land bridge between Great Britain and Denmark.
There are two characters, mainly referred to as the Boy and the Old Man, though they do have names, Jem and Griel. They live on a crumbling deep sea rig in the midst of a vast wind turbine farm. Their accommodations, their means of survival, even their relationship is presented in the most virtuosic description of bleakness and discomfort I have ever read. Simultaneously I was all in for the Boy, who comes to matter as a character of considerable heroism. That combination of setting and character strikes me as a remarkable and brilliant achievement.
Most of the book describes—you could say, page after page after page—of repairs and maintenance of the turbines, the taking apart and putting back together of mechanical things, being cold and uncomfortable, eating nasty and indeterminate tinned food, the weather and the sea. How was this not boring? How could it be so engaging, riveting at times? As the book winds to its conclusion, it is increasingly gripping.
I have told you everything and nothing about the book. I have not mentioned the resonances—to time, mortality, climate change, to progress (or not!), to resilience and what a human being really needs to live. Comparisons to Beckett and William Golding are not amiss. Doggerland will sit comfortably on the shelf with other favorites, The Inheritors by Golding and The Wall by Marlen Haushofer.
September 6, 2022
This one is a real tricky one. A lot of why I don't like it and would slate it is my own fault with the book and my failure to meet it on its own terms.
The main character, simply known as 'the boy', lives on a wind farm in the sea, scraping together resources and power to trade for food supplies. The book revolves around the tensions and the relationship between him and the other character, the 'old man'. There are some elements of mystery and intrigue to uncover within the narrative of the book, but the objective is predominantly a 'what if' picture of climate change disaster, specifically flooding. There are some segmented passages about the sea and the nature of water that were really quite beautiful.
Unfortunately, by focusing so much on the practical issues of the boy's attempts to get by, the reader also feels the claustrophobia and mundanity his existence. So much so that before you pickup momentum and interest (perhaps a third in) there is a very gruelling challenge of endurance in which the author drags the reader through passages examining labels on tins, weights of food items, mechanisms of repairs.
Two stars is not fair to the book, but three rewards it more than I am willing to do given my own struggles getting through it.
For the more patient, and perhaps faster, reader it's definitely one I would recommend.
The main character, simply known as 'the boy', lives on a wind farm in the sea, scraping together resources and power to trade for food supplies. The book revolves around the tensions and the relationship between him and the other character, the 'old man'. There are some elements of mystery and intrigue to uncover within the narrative of the book, but the objective is predominantly a 'what if' picture of climate change disaster, specifically flooding. There are some segmented passages about the sea and the nature of water that were really quite beautiful.
Unfortunately, by focusing so much on the practical issues of the boy's attempts to get by, the reader also feels the claustrophobia and mundanity his existence. So much so that before you pickup momentum and interest (perhaps a third in) there is a very gruelling challenge of endurance in which the author drags the reader through passages examining labels on tins, weights of food items, mechanisms of repairs.
Two stars is not fair to the book, but three rewards it more than I am willing to do given my own struggles getting through it.
For the more patient, and perhaps faster, reader it's definitely one I would recommend.
November 13, 2018
Sanity and resolve patiently weather the bleak and hostile location of a decaying oceanic platform, until monotony casts off and drifts beyond its dependable boundary.
Its occupants, a duo humbly labelled as ‘the boy’ and ‘the old man’, manage a forest of wind turbines surrounded by the endlessly churning ocean and a brooding confinement that ebbs and flows. Here, time erodes at a gruelling pace as they surrender to the predictability of one another’s company.
The chronic tedium of their routine keeps a steady course throughout and is carried along on alternating currents of futility and hope, while the narrative shifts between the past and present to reveal the prospect of a desperately punishing future.
This convincingly speculative read sees you brushing the salt off your clothes and guarding your heart against its lingering misery. Even when I’d reached the end I felt as though a little part of me was still clinging to the uninviting deck.
(I received a digital copy of this title via Netgalley courtesy of the publisher, which I voluntarily chose to read and review.)
Its occupants, a duo humbly labelled as ‘the boy’ and ‘the old man’, manage a forest of wind turbines surrounded by the endlessly churning ocean and a brooding confinement that ebbs and flows. Here, time erodes at a gruelling pace as they surrender to the predictability of one another’s company.
The chronic tedium of their routine keeps a steady course throughout and is carried along on alternating currents of futility and hope, while the narrative shifts between the past and present to reveal the prospect of a desperately punishing future.
This convincingly speculative read sees you brushing the salt off your clothes and guarding your heart against its lingering misery. Even when I’d reached the end I felt as though a little part of me was still clinging to the uninviting deck.
(I received a digital copy of this title via Netgalley courtesy of the publisher, which I voluntarily chose to read and review.)
April 11, 2019
Weinig kans om Doggerland-recensies te vinden zonder verwijzingen naar The road enWachten op Godot. De Vladimir en Estragon van dienst zijn een jongen en een oudere man die een gigantisch windmolenpark moeten onderhouden in een post-apocalyptische wereld waarin de zee het land voorgoed heeft overspoeld. Smith beklemtoont knap de beklemming door veel antwoorden weg te laten, maar vergeet om in deze bleekheid zijn personages te kleuren, waardoor hun eentonige onderhoudswerk ook voor de lezer als Sisyphus-arbeid aanvoelt
June 22, 2019
I haven't delved into the whole cli-fi thang anywhere near as much as I'd like to, but from my limited experience I have to say, Doggerland is bloody excellent. Bleak, propulsive, frightening and eerily believable, it had an almost Cormac McCarthyesque darkness in the relationship between the three characters. One of very few books that I literally could not put down. Also, I couldn't help but wonder whether this is what Waterworld might have been like if it that steaming shit-heap of a film had actually been good.
September 5, 2024
DNF @ 52%
I’m just finding this really boring. I’m halfway through and nothing particularly interesting has happened yet.
The two central characters in the book are pretty dull and the detached third person narrative is making it hard for me to care about the protagonist (who doesn’t really have much of a personality).
There’s also way too many long descriptions of things that just aren't that interesting.
I’m just finding this really boring. I’m halfway through and nothing particularly interesting has happened yet.
The two central characters in the book are pretty dull and the detached third person narrative is making it hard for me to care about the protagonist (who doesn’t really have much of a personality).
There’s also way too many long descriptions of things that just aren't that interesting.
October 25, 2019
Zeer mooi en meeslepend geschreven, in een vlekkeloze vertaling van Kees Mollema. Dus een geweldige leeservaring!
https://lalageleest.nl/2019/10/25/dog...
https://lalageleest.nl/2019/10/25/dog...
November 1, 2019
Really enjoyed this - an excellent debut.
March 13, 2023
Not sure I enjoyed this novel, I wasn't really sure what was going on
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