The Wall

"The Wall is very different from the first two books. It’s a near-future dystopia where the seas have risen, and there is now a very high wall that’s been built around what remains of the UK. Everyone in their 20s has to do a couple of years of national service on the wall, doing guard duty. They’re trying to keep out what they call ‘the others’, which means immigrants. They do endless drills, and sometimes the real thing happens, and people arrive with boats and machine guns trying to get into the country, and they have to fight back. They’re sent out on a ship if they fail. The book follows a very ordinary narrator, a young man, as he comes to the wall for the first time. It’s a really simple concept, but the way it’s told is absolutely incredible. I think there are very few people who would manage to wring poetry out of a big concrete wall, but John Lanchester definitely does. I absolutely inhaled that book. Yes! So one of the many things that happens to our young narrator when he reaches the wall, is he falls fairly slowly in love with another of the people serving. She’s just an ordinary person as well. So this is not one of those odd couple romances, this isn’t enemies to lovers; this is actually quite a gentle relationship. But by the end of the novel, it’s what’s keeping him going – they are the only things keeping each other afloat. The relationship is vital to the book."