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Summary
Summary
In this thought-provoking and lyrical debut novel, a young woman's only hope for survival in the dystopian future is a ship, a Noah's Ark, that can rescue 500 people.
London burned for three weeks. And then it got worse. . .
Young, naive, and frustratingly sheltered, Lalla has grown up in near-isolation in her parents' apartment, sheltered from the chaos of their collapsed civilization. But things are getting more dangerous outside. People are killing each other for husks of bread, and the police are detaining anyone without an identification card. On her sixteenth birthday, Lalla's father decides it's time to use their escape route -- a ship he's built that is only big enough to save five hundred people.
But the utopia her father has created isn't everything it appears. There's more food than anyone can eat, but nothing grows; more clothes than anyone can wear, but no way to mend them; and no-one can tell her where they are going.
Author Notes
Antonia Honeywell studied English at Manchester University and worked at the Natural History and Victoria and Albert Museums in London, running creative writing workshops and education programmes for children, before training as a teacher. During her ten years teaching English, drama and film studies, she wrote a musical, and a play which was performed at the Edinburgh Festival. She has four young children and lives in Buckinghamshire. The Ship is her first novel.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"I was born at the end of the world" is how 16-year-old Lalla Paul of London begins her story. Though civilization is rapidly dying around her, her parents-mainly her wealthy and connected father, Michael, inventor of a major computer network censorship tool-manage to keep her sheltered from the worst of it. Michael has a plan in the form of a ship that's large enough to carry them and 500 others, along with years' worth of supplies, out to sea and safety. But once aboard the ship, Lalla is traumatized by tragedy, unsettled by her father's slow transformation into a messianic figure, overwhelmed by love, and concerned about the long-term prospects for survival. Honeywell's lyrical descriptions of Lalla's thoughts and the ship itself are haunting, and quite grim when Lalla questions their plans and her father's influence. But Lalla's adolescent vacillating about different aspects of ship life can get tiresome, and the reader might eventually sympathize with the characters who are frustrated by her. This mixed bag of beauty and vexation has a gut-twisting epilogue that will appeal to lovers of psychological speculative fiction. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
Sixteen-year-old Lalla "was born at the end of the world" in London, sometime in the not-too-distant future. Food is tinned or dried. Floods and fires have wreaked devastation; parks are now shanty towns and the dispossessed have taken over the British Museum. The masses can be officially culled. Nothing grows; the seas no longer support life. Cannibalism exists in parts of the world and people breed algae in urine to eat. Lalla is sheltered, living with her parents in a high-security flat with enough to eat and sterilised water. The only people she sees are beggars on the daily trips to the British Museum with her mother to feed the destitute. Her father, Michael Paul, has brought to secret fruition his master plan, the outfitting of a ship big enough to keep 500 carefully chosen people alive for at least two decades. Escape is not without casualties, but hopes are high as the traumatised group of international passengers set sail. They feel themselves blessed, with vast stocks, a doctor and dentist, a cinema, a sports hall, book groups - groups of all kinds. But hope turns to unease for Lalla. Where are they going? Why does no one ask questions? Why must they discard personal possessions, the marking of time, even memory? Most disturbing of all is Michael's evolution into a messiah figure, the saviour they call Father. She rebels, notching up the days on her cabin wall, clinging to mementoes. She is troubled by the people left behind. The news shows the gassing of the crowds at the British Museum, women holding up dying babies at the windows. On the ship, they respond by destroying the mast that receives TV signals and adopting a be-here-now philosophy. "We all miss things," says Tom, Lalla's sketchily drawn boyfriend, "but they are all part of where we are now." "Time no more" becomes a catchphrase, as does "Don't look back". Lalla won't have it: they must go back and do something. She is not sure what - just not this. The ship, she believes, is "not escape from hunger but the cause of it". Who's right? An eternal cruise with rotas, group meals, healthy communal activities and inspirational talks may seem like hell. But it is still a tough choice between that and cannibalism and the algae. And it would have been even tougher had Antonia Honeywell (pictured) left more hope for the masses; instead, the situation appears so dire that going back seems like suicide. Everything has gone into the dystopian soup: climate change, globalisation, financial collapse, totalitarianism. There are nods to GM crops, vaccination, bees, antibiotics, but there is a vagueness about what has actually happened. The moral landscape is also broad-brush. What should we make of Tola, the daughter of Lalla's African friend Patience? Presented as a heroine, Tola killed her own father, who had fenced his patch and fed his own family in the face of mass starvation. We don't know what to make of her because she is little more than an example - a hypothetical conundrum of the kind that moral philosophers pose. In real situations, the devil is in the detail. The moral dilemma is secondary to the core coming-of-age story about a girl growing up and casting off the shackles of parental control. Father and daughter are the only fully realised characters. Michael is ambiguous, an affectionate father and husband, romantic idealist, dreamer and visionary, but also an incipient megalomaniac. Lalla is an irritating teenager who takes it as a personal affront that the world isn't ideal, who sulks and moans and mopes about, getting on everybody's nerves and despising everyone around her. Then again, she is only 16 and not there by free choice like everyone else. The nightmare of the ship is that its inhabitants are becoming people who can no longer make their own decisions. They are infantilised, growing down while Lalla grows up. Honeywell's debut is ambitious and well written and provides endless possibilities for debate. It ends on a cliffhanger, suggesting the possibility of a sequel. If there is a Ship 2, I'd like to see the inevitable chaos life on board has become, as well as the final realisation of its self-aggrandising heroine that she is just as flawed as all the rest - and that the moral landscape is a minefield whether you're on land or sea. Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie is published by Canongate. 320pp, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pounds 12.99 To order The Ship for pounds 10.39 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. - Carol Birch
Kirkus Review
A sheltered teenager has an existential crisis while riding out the apocalypse aboard her father's private ark in this dystopian debut novel.Sixteen-year-old Lalage "Lalla" Paul lives comfortably in a secure flat with her wealthy parents, Anna and Michael. Outside, the environment is in ruins, resources are scarce, and the military-run government performs mass executions to reduce the population. Intent on providing a better lifeand eventual deathfor his family, Michael purchases a ship, stocks it with supplies, and selects 500 virtuous people to fill its berths; Anna, however, maintains it's their moral obligation to stay in London and help the less fortunate. When someone shoots Anna through the living room window, Michael and Lalla carry her onto the ship, where she succumbs to her injury. The ship's passengers then do battle with British troops and a starving mob before heading out to sea. Michael (who becomes a quasi-cult leader known as "Father") encourages his new flock to forget the past and enjoy the present, but Lalla stubbornly refuses, whining about the lack of adversity, fixating on what's happening back home, and obsessing over where the ship is headed. Even falling in love isn't enough to distract the petulant, ungrateful Lalla from her endless cycle of adolescent angst and petty rebellion. After a harrowing launch, Honeywell's tale sails into the doldrums and sinks under the weight of haphazard plotting, uneven pacing, and subpar character work. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
As the daughter of a man with important government connections, Lalla Paul has grown up fairly well off in a devastated Britain that subsides on increasingly scarce food rations and is overrun with undocumented refugees. As conditions worsen, 16-year-old Lalla and her parents are ready to escape in the Ship with 500 carefully chosen other people. Throughout her young life, Lalla knew her father was preparing for the day they must flee, even if her mother stubbornly believed that things could get better. With her father's insistence that this is their one chance for survival, Lalla will finally see the culmination of these years of planning. But will the Ship be the answer to all their difficulties, or will Lalla discover that their problems exist in the people who surround her? Taking the old adage of "best laid plans," this debut novel creates a new world that may not necessarily be better than the old. -VERDICt -Honeywell's dystopian coming-of-age tale is challenging and intense, but the large amount of exposition and "daddy/daughter" dynamic slows the plot. Despite these flaws, this is a solid YA crossover.-KC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
