Booklog 50/2021: R.W.W. Greene: Twenty Five to Life

[jacey]

When a humanity-saving expedition to Proxima Centauri leaves Earth taking one of Julie's close friends with it, Julie is left behind, one of the billions on the dying Earth. Oh, it's not about to explode tomorrow, but the air is full of dangerous particulates and most people have been housed in cubes, kept doped up to the eyeballs by constant attachment to virtual reality feeds. When Julie's mother decides to move out of the family home in a failing suburb, Julie, still a minor at 23, is faced with life in a city cube… or… she can go on the road and hope to fall in with the Volksgeist, groups of tramps, hoboes and free citizens in their collection of ramshackle campers, and converted vans. So she goes on the road.  Since she's not a legal adult until she's 25, Julie is a runner. Luckily she meets up with Ranger, an experienced road warrior whose lungs are none too healthy. There's a lot to learn, from driving (which she'd never been allowed to do) and how to pack the van to making soap and bio diesel from used cooking oil.

It's a coming of age story, but it's also a travelogue around this dysfunctional, dystopian (North American) world. To be honest it doesn't really have a plot other than, 'Julie goes travelling and meets a lot of people, some good, some not,' but it's an interesting read with, on balance, more good folks than bad. Julie is an engaging protagonist and Ranger is an interesting character who becomes Julie's mentor.

 

 

 

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