Verwandte Artikel zu Not Alone

Not Alone - Hardcover

Jackson, Sarah K.

 
9780385548434: Not Alone
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0385548435 ISBN 13: 9780385548434
Verlag: Doubleday Books, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

An exhilarating debut novel, tracing the harrowing journey of a mother and son fighting for survival and a future in a world ravaged by environmental disaster • "Not Alone kept me breathless with tension… [A] gripping adventure story.” —Emma Donoghue, New York Times bestselling author of Room and Haven

Five years ago, a microplastic storm wiped out most of the population. No infrastructure. No safe havens. No goodbyes.

Since then, Katie and Harry have lived in isolation in their small flat outside London. Katie forages, hunts the surviving animal population, and provides for Harry, who was born after the storm, and who has never left their little home. After years without human contact, Katie and Harry are shocked by the arrival of a threatening newcomer, just as Katie’s persistent cough seems to have taken a turn for the worse. But this proof of life beyond their familiar environment spurs Katie to undertake a previously unthinkable journey, in search of her fiancé, Jack, who never came home the day of the storm, and a different kind of life for Harry.

Outside of their protected bubble, Katie and Harry encounter an altered world, full of new dangers, other survivors--both friend and foe--and many surprises. Katie's resources, energy, and parenting abilities are pushed to the brink, as Harry's life and safety waver in the balance, knowing that the further they get from their flat, the harder it will be to return if things go wrong. Sarah K. Jackson combines beautiful language, palm-sweating adventure, and a deep, true-to-life parent-child bond that transcends its post-apocalyptic setting, in a debut that emphasizes the importance of resilience, hope, and sustainability today.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

SARAH K. JACKSON is an ecologist specializing in botany and has a keen interest in human-wildlife coexistence, conservation, climate change, and microplastics pollution. Her job has taken her all around the UK, scrambling through woodland, paddling up rivers, squelching through mountain bogs, and also sometimes overseas. She studied psychology and criminology at Cardiff University, before doing a masters in conservation ecology at Oxford Brookes University.

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1

“There’s nothing there, Harry.”

“You were staring. Your eyes are all big.”

“Sorry,” I say, whispering—to remind him to use quiet voices next to the open window. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, just grizzling up to rain I think.” I force myself to smile. Get a grip, Katie.

And still, I can’t help but glance outside. Eyes scanning the same flat hard ground that always looks up at me from four floors below, snaked with algae and moss. The same grey buildings that press in on us all around, with dappled ivy-strewn alleys running between them. Searching amongst the rowan trees and snowberry bushes, thick and wild along the crumbling walkways. Pausing over the leaves piled up where they’ve been blown. Everything is alive, pink-red, yellow and golden out there, fluttering in the pale orange light. A scattering of something that could just be fine, powdery grey snow, if I pretended, swirling across the open air.

Harry shrugs his delicate little shoulder and I realize I’m clutching it tightly, as if I only need to hang on to him to keep him safe forever. The kitchen-lounge comes back into focus. Together we lower the sloshing tin bucket to our feet. The cloudy water swirls with debris and the shield bug—iridescent-green shell that so mesmerizes me with its precious rare colour, red “socks” up to its ankles—still thrashes on the surface.

I catch Harry’s wrists before he scoops up the tiny creature. His face crumples, the bug’s six legs desperately flailing. “You know you mustn’t—we’ve been washing stuff that’s come from outside in there!”

Harry flinches, scrutinizing the almost-clear water fearfully. “There’s bad in it, Mummy?”

“Could be. You know this. We must always be careful?.?.?.” I glance at the woodstove behind me.

“What if he’s breathed it or eaten it?” Harry says, a whine creeping into his voice, the shield bug buzzing at the sides of the bucket.

“Try this.” I grab the heatproof glove from beside the stove. Harry’s hand is swamped by the thick padded material, but he gently rescues the shield bug and we watch together as it wobbles out onto the railing with the disorientation and weak limbs of something too clogged with dust to live for much longer. Too sick from inflammation or the toxins leached or bloated by the foreign particles—the slow way. Or just plain suffocating—usually quicker. Yet creatures like this that can reproduce fast, before they succumb, seem more successful at surviving in the world After.

“I’m going to call him a green,” Harry whispers.

“A green?”

He nods, eyes bright. “’Cause he looks like emerald-dragon-green from the book. Emer because that’s a brand-new secret name and only we know it.”

“How do you know it’s a he?” I smile, thinking about Harry’s dragon book and feeling that tug towards make-believe.

Harry peers closer at the shield bug. “How do you tell?”

“Actually, I don’t know, usually male animals are prettier though, so they can attract females.”

“He is very pretty. Maybe that’s what dragons are, just lots of tiny pretty bugs all together. That would be cool! So dragons are not-real but kind of real in the end?”

“Yeah, it would,” I say, wondering when Harry became this sweet imaginative little person.

Emer opens his wings—a film of grey on the unevenly swollen and oozing lung-like vents underneath—and jumps out into the open air. Gone. One way or another.

“Was it the only friend?” Harry whispers gently, peering into the bucket, as if he might rupture tiny insect eardrums with his voice.

I try to return his grin, but the make-believe feeling is already seeping out fast. Harry hurries back towards the kitchen, skipping and bouncing off the arm of the sofa on his way, as I shut the window and smooth down the seals.

“Did you see, Mummy? I added these when you weren’t here.” He points at one of his artworks, stuck to the front of the defunct TV—some old hooped earrings of mine I loved wearing at uni and foreign coins have been added.

They make his collage of gleaming red and yellow leaves look like the insides of an expensive glossy watch—an artistic autumnal leaf print beneath tiny perfect cogs.

“Where did you find them?” But I know instantly. He’s been in drawers and cupboards I’d rather he left alone.

Harry looks away.

“I don’t want you going through that stuff, Harry.” But then I spot a pencilled motif repeated across several of the collages. “What are those overlapping circles supposed to be, rain?”

Harry shrugs, eyes avoiding mine. “Raindrops on raindrops.”

“You didn’t uncover the windows when it was raining, did you? Go right up to the glass to trace it?” I glance at the window—where there are the remains of vague smudgy circles where rainstorms have hit the other side of the glass.

“No, Mummy,” he says, his voice flat—hiding something—and throwing me a worried glance as he hurries to wait by the counter.

I clutch my forehead. Maybe it’s just been a long time since the Fear has settled inside me—that unbearable quality of fear, laced with dread and blind panic, that coloured most of that first year. Different to what I think of as healthy fear, with its surge of adrenaline and sharpness in a moment of trouble that feels better at helping me act. I’m not sure why it’s there today, heavy in my gut, putting me on edge.

Trying to focus on the task instead, I haul the bucket back to the kitchen area. The fruits are warm and sticky as I rinse them over the bucket, pouring clean—filtered and boiled—water from my flask over and tilting the sieve to carefully inspect the delicate skins for grey residue. The blackberry harvest is late this year. And these, the first, early fruits—bitter-berries, Harry calls them—are always tart and sharp, almost inedible, and Harry winces with each mouthful. Yet he stuffs them down. One after another as I pick out clean ones for him.

I think back to the first few weeks, when I still had chocolates and cake and actual sugar in the flat—boxes of supplies stashed in the kitchen from the panic-spree in the last winter Before—and I would go from periods of barely eating to periods of stuffing down mouthful after mouthful, even though I wasn’t hungry, even though it didn’t make me feel better, because it tasted good for just a second and it was filling me up.

I squeeze his shoulder again. “Sure you’ve not had enough?”

He doesn’t answer, instead swallowing down more berries without appearing to chew at all.

“OK, let’s save the rest for tomorrow.” I shut the lid on the still-dirty ones.

“Mummy, I want them.” He looks so desperately sad for a moment that I nearly give in. And besides, we need to eat plenty; everything, I have long suspected, is less nutritious than it once was. Yet he looks flushed, his eyes a bit wild, and he’s eaten nearly a bowlful.

“Remember how you were really sick last year because you ate too many damsons and redcurrants? Doesn’t it feel full?” I kneel to rub his tummy, putting my ear to it. “Oh my, Mr. Tummy is complaining.”

Harry’s beautiful little face breaks into a grin and a grimace at the same...

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Verlag
Doubleday Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385548435
ISBN 13 
9780385548434
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
335
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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