
As we all know, Scottish people love to tell you about having the best tap water in Britain. Imagine, then, what would happen if they had the only tap water in Britain, on account of the nation being brought to its knees by a months-long drought, and even that supply dwindling as rapidly as the collapse of social order.
This is the scenario painted by Rachelle Atalla in her second novel Thirsty Animals, whose themes bear a degree of similarity to its predecessor The Pharmacist.
There, the setting was post-nuclear, with bunkered survivors clamouring for stockpiled medicine. Here, a family farm near the border is comparatively well equipped (livestock, a generator) to weather a climate dystopia, so when three transients arrive seeking assistance, the family do their bit. Shifty, yet faultlessly helpful around the premises to which all are mostly confined, they’re only one disruptive element among many.
Thirsty Animals is your textbook slow burner, its scenes bleak but attuning us to this proverbial new normal as its characters – narrator and family junior Aida, plus her mother and uncles – do likewise. Notably, the obvious spectre of climate change is never raised directly, perhaps implying a defeated acceptance; either way Atalla avoids easily-chewable content for activists (or, despite scenes of invasive Englanders desperate to cross the border, supporters of an independent Scotland). Her pacing is splendid, though a sharp late turn into almost Stephen King-esque grisliness feels tacked on, and even in these austere times you might want a more sparkling narration than Aida’s: hardly an unreliable voice, or morally suspect, just a crashing bore.
Thirsty Animals, Rachelle Atalla (Hodder & Stoughton)
Price: £18.99. Info: here
words NOEL GARDNER
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