A boy drowns in the cold ocean. To begin with we know little about him beyond the brutality of his death, but details begin to emerge and we learn about teenage boy Seth's life in America. His circle of friends and growing love for one of them, his brother Owen, damaged by a terrible incident in the boys' childhood, his emotionally distant mother and medicated father. His life before his death.
But Seth wakes somewhere else, a place beyond his death. He is alone in the English town and house he lived in until he was 8 and the terrible thing happened to Owen. The town is overrun with weeds and in places a burnt wasteland. Is this his personal hell, purgatory, or something else?
Ness never lets the reader stand on firm ground, making us ask questions about what we know to be real and our relationship with reality and technology.
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