Gethan Dick’s novel Water in the Desert Fire in the Night is a story of hope and resilience which sees disparate neighbours band together after most of London (and the world’s population) is wiped out.
Here is a novel about hope, wolves, companionship and resilience, hunger and gold. It’s about an underachieving millennial, a retired midwife and a charismatic Dubliner who set out from London after the end of the world to cycle to a sanctuary in the southern Alps.
It’s about packing light and choosing the right companions and trousers: what’s worth knowing, what’s worth living, and holding on to your sense of humour in moments big and small. It’s about the fact that the world ends all the time. It’s about what to do next.
Told from Audaz’s perspective, the story is that of her, Adi, Sarah and Pressure Drop, and initially Joy and Trevor, who lived on the same London street but weren’t friends before they were forced to rely on one another. Audaz doesn’t see herself as especially talented or useful, and has been drifting in life up to the point when everyone around her started dying during the pandemic. Her unusual upbringing, some of it spent abroad with her parents, makes her adaptable, not at all materialistic and a linguist. All of which will prove invaluable.
When Sarah decides to leave London and head towards friends who live in the South of France, with a view to training others in midwifery, Audaz is invited to join her and some of the others. And the novel takes us on their journey from those initial meetings in the middle of their London street to their first hideout in London and brief excursions out to source what they’ll need before travelling with them all the way down through the South of England and on into France.
This is where Gethan Dick’s writing style really comes into its own and I loved its temporal fluidity and how she tells the story. Moving across her timelines between London, the South of England and various stops in France, time and again, gives her novel a real sense of momentum and movement and a rare energy and vibrancy. That, and the characters’ humour helps this novel feel lighter and airier than some other post-apocalyptic or pandemic novels. There’s plenty to unpack here but her touch is light and she doesn’t dwell on what caused the deaths at the outset or what will happen, even though her characters acknowledge worse is bound to come.
Because the thing about the end of the world is that it happens all the time… Every second, every millisecond, the world is ending.
People’s response to the pandemic is highlighted throughout the novel with how they group together and I thought it was particularly demonstrated by the contrast between the Castle where Charles rules with his bully boys and misogynistic regime compared to Susan’s friends’ more welcoming, cooperative Chateau. There are survivors purely looking after their own interests and needs and others, like Sarah and the former power plant workers, who have an altogether more altruistic or practical outlook on life moving forward.
Gethan Dick keeps her focus firmly on her main character and delineates the others sparsely or introduces new characters as sketches to keep the story centred around Audaz and always moving along. I didn’t feel as close to Adi, Sarah or Pressure Drop as I did to Audaz, and there were times when I felt like strangling Sarah, but overall I did like them and how they complemented each other and stuck together. As for the people they meet along the way, I especially liked Martin, his loyalty to his sister, and how positive and resourceful he was.
Water in the Desert, Fire in the Night is an uplifting story, one of people connecting and coming together, in the face of a World pandemic. The novel sets out on a journey with the supposedly underachieving main character, and her neighbours who become friends, and leaves you with a sense of buoyancy about the future. Its energy and fluidity of storytelling will sweep you along to believe that Audaz will get the happy ending or new beginning that she craves. Audaz’s story is a reassuring one, as is what she comes to realise by the end of it.
Water in the Desert, Fire in the Night is written by Gethan Dick and published by Tramp Press. It is available as an ebook and in paperback from Amazon UK (affiliate scheme), Bookshop.org (affiliate scheme), and Waterstones.
Gethan Dick is one half of the visual arts duo gethan&myles and lives in Marseille, France.
My thanks to Helen Richardson and Tramp Press for inviting me to take part in this blog tour.
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