Doggerland is a remarkable debut novel, creating a claustrophobic sense of growing danger against the backdrop of a wind farm seascape that the two main characters are effectively trapped within. The novel dwells on the minutiae of keeping a wind farm operational with limited supplies, slowly developing the back story of the global and personal circumstances that have led to this position. The sea and wind themselves are the other main character, being the drivers behind short term activity and long term outcomes.

i recognise this doesn’t necessarily sound very thrilling (i’m a terrible spoiler-phobe), but be reassured that Doggerland skilfully builds tension from both circumstance and the interpersonal dynamic.

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...

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2018/11/become-ocean-ben-smiths-doggerland.html

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.

Doggerland by author Ben Smith is a gripping and haunting read of a novel. Pulls you in from the beginning and holds you in. I loved the near future book, Doggerland!
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an arc copy of Doggerland in exchange for an honest review.

Good read. Enjoyed this book. Ok overall.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Harper Collins uk for my eARC of this book in exchange for honest unbiased review

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 will see 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 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.