Doggerland – Ben Smith

 The old man and the boy inhabit a rig in the North Sea, from where they service the giant wind turbines that stretch as far as the horizon. But the boy is no longer the boy he was when he was brought aboard to fulfil his absconded father’s contract; he is a young man.

And not all the wind turbines turn anymore. They are failing faster than the old man and the boy can repair them with the limited spare parts brought by the sporadic supply boat. Ultimately, that’s not their problem, so they carry on their monotonous existence. The boy, self-motivated by his interest in the engineering, does what he can to keep occupied. The old man is more interested in dredging the seabed for relics. Relics of what? the boy wonders.

There are more fundamental unknowns for the boy. What lies beyond the wind farm? Is there still a shoreline? And what happened to his father?

The book majors on the interaction between the old man and the boy, whose incarceration together makes for a complex relationship. There is a mutual dependency that is tested by life’s irritations, the rigours of their lifestyle, the generational divide, and competition for priority use of the single maintenance launch. It is the boy’s means of reaching turbines in need of attention, and the old man’s means of dredging. When left alone on the rig, the boy dwells on his missing father and researches the maintenance log for answers. He spots some correlations and clues, so the possibility of discovering his father’s fate arises.

The world conjured up – the giant engineering pitted against the remorseless sea, wind, and rain; the ever turning blades of steel against the grey limitless sky – is bleak but engrossing. The characters are convincing and the outlook for both is uncertain to the end. For once, the blurb on the cover is accurate: The Road meets Waiting for Godot.