The Upper World

Woah. Every now and then you find a book that takes you to a completely unexpected place, and The Upper World really did that for me. An action-packed mash-up of gang warfare, physics, street violence, philosophy and time travel..

Fifteen years apart, Esso and Rhia are living in South London and navigating their way around the local criminal gangs and pushing against society's less-than-spectacular expectations of them. When Esso gets injured in a car accident he accesses the Upper World, a place beyond our reality, which gives him a terrifying glimpse of his own future. The book explores the idea that there's so much more to reality than what we see, while showing us some of the separate worlds that exist in our own neighbourhood. In the future when people tell me YA fiction can't be literary or innovative, I'm going to point them in the direction of this book.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this novel - I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read it from the perspective of a teacher/librarian as I am very much looking to broaden the school curriculum. I think this book will be enjoyed by many and I will be ordering this book in to the school library when it is released. The time travel aspect was really well done and it was great to have a diverse book that is still grounded in so much science. It is definitely one for my reluctant readers as it was an absolute tour de force that I just could not put down.

Femi Fadugba’s ‘The Upper World’ isn’t perfect, but its flaws are easy to forgive. It’s rare to read a Science Fiction novel, especially one aimed at younger readers, that is so solidly grounded in science. The author is a quantum physicist and it shows, I came away from the book feeling like I had learned a lot. The fact that he is also a very good writer means that learning is a pleasure rather than a chore.
Appropriately enough for a book about time travel, ‘The Upper World’ is set in two different times. London in 2020 and a near future 2035 version of the city which is credibly different but still recognisable. Fadugba doesn’t indulge in flying cars of jet packs, predicting instead a future where the surveillance state is even more oppressive than it is today. London itself is instantly recognisable, vibrant, multi-cultural, magnificent and dangerous.
The book is populated with believable characters, an assortment of young, black Londoners growing up in a world that often feels like it doesn’t want them. The protagonist of the 2020 portion of the book is Esso, a boy surrounded by violence and trying to reach his own potential despite it. He appears in the 2035 sections of the book as well, although the lead there goes to Rhia, a teenage girl in foster care.
To get into the science would be to give too much away, but the realistic setting grounds the more fantastical elements well. In fact calling the events of the book fantastic is probably inappropriate. As noted at the start, the time travel elements of the book are fully rooted in physics, making for a fascinating read.
The human side of the story is preoccupied, as time travels tales so often are, with the characters search for identity and understanding of their origins. In some ways I found that the weakest part of the book, but the author does pull it together brilliantly at the end, with a moving and convincing conclusion.
It’s that authenticity that really makes the book. Intellectually, emotionally and politically it feels like it was written from the heart. The fact that it was optioned by Netflix before it was even published is no surprise. There is an intelligence and a relevance here that’s joyous to behold.