After the Snow by SD Crockett

Willo is alone, hiding in the snow on the mountain above his home. His family are gone, his father, stepmother, brothers and sisters dragged away by strangers.

As Willo's speaks in his own demotic speech his life takes shape before us. Willo is very unusual in being born on the edge of the Welsh mountain he is hiding on. Most people live in what is left of the cities but he is a 'straggler', a person living on the edges of a diminished society. We are not too far in the future, global warming has caused the Atlantic currents to shut down resulting in the Snowball Earth scenario - Britain is covered by snow which only thaws for a very brief period in the summer time. Willo has been taught by his father to survive in these extreme neo Ice Age conditions, to hunt, set snares, make furs and clothing from them.

Willo gathers his courage and goes in search of his lost family, aquiring Mary, abandoned by her father, and struggling to survive in the much altered city of Manchester. He navigates his way haphazardly through a host of characters Dickensian in their suffering in an anarchic city teetering on the edge of total disaster: an old couple sewing fur coats for the rich with a secret utopian hope; a ratcatcher who gives Willo and Mary shelter for the night; an impossibly rich beautiful woman living in luxury; and roaming gangs of brutal inebriated enforcers and feral children. Resistance to the authorities is swiftly crushed, and when Willo finds himself betrayed by the one person he trusted most all seems lost. But there is always hope.

I really enjoyed Crockett's book. Willo's idiosyncratic speech mannerisms bring to life a young man on the edge of adulthood unwillingly promoted from pack member to lone wolf. His wildness and connection with the landscape are vividly communicated, as is the bleak possible future we all face if our climate does fail. I found Willo's choices brave, his struggle between his survivalist 'dog' mind and his deep humanity compelling. Crockett's plotting is brave, she doesn't allow for improbable happy endings and Willo has to endure terrible horrors to become the person his father raised him to be, a 'beacon of hope'.

A perfect dystopia, in that it made me reflect on the present but wasn't completely pessamistic, there was hope that perhaps humanity can do better than just devolve into savagery