LINE by Niall Bourke

4 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: I read a review of it on Mairéad Hearne's blog, HERE

In a Nutshell: Dystopian. Speculative Fiction.  From the blurb - Line pushes the boundaries of speculative, high concept fiction. Deeply moving, it also touches on many of the pressing issues of our turbulent world: migration and the refugee crisis, big data and the erosion of democracy, climate change, colonialism, economic exploitation, social conformity and religious fanaticism

At some unspecified time in the future, Willard lives on the Line - a constantly moving tented community that stretches as far as the eye can see in either direction.  Line dwellers subsist on the bare essentials, their faith that what lies at the end is worthy waiting for, and the fear of consequences should they dare to leave; away from the Line there is nothing.  A failed attempt to escape means a fate worse than death, as is attempting to skip one's place.  It has existed for generations, and children know of the sacrifice made by their parents and their grandparents to afford them their current place.  Nobody knows why it began or where it goes, just that they are heading towards some better unknown.

I loved the first part, with a restless Willard questioning his life.  The writing was great, most absorbing; I was so impressed by the whole concept of the Line and looked forward to finding out how the people had been coerced into living according to its rules, believing in the myth of the end, and how the Line had developed its own code of law and become its own society.

Around half way through, we leave the Line and surrounding nothingness, and are presented with what feels like a different book, detailing the wider truths about the world.  Much of it appears in the form of a printed handbook, about the current economic situation, about technological progress and philosophy.  It's extremely dense and complex, and rather dull; you know when you read a text book because you need to learn about something, but the way in which it is written makes your brain shake its head and say, 'Nuh-uh, not storing all these words'?  That was how this was.  I kept trying to take it in but it didn't want to stay.  I felt as though the ideas had not been developed enough; the whole middle section about the new London seemed disjointed, and I just didn't buy it.

During the last one fifth of the book we come to the whys and hows of the Line: the psychology of how and why people queue and wait, of hope, faith, religion, generational beliefs passed down, of the vision behind the line and the whole truth about it—so up my street I welcomed it in with coffee and cake, and loved it all over again.  Fascinating.  The end was sad and bleak, but right for the story.  I like those sort of endings.

To sum up: a first class idea and I'm glad I read it, but I felt there needed to be more.  More background, more detail, more attention to 'readability', more character-based narrative and fewer pages out of the handbook.   And thanks again to Mairéad for introducing me to it :)