Review: Bridge 108 by Anne Charnock

Rating: 2 stars
Source: eARC from Netgalley for review
Genre: Dystopian
Pages: 204

This book is about Caleb, a twelve-year-old refugee from climate-ravaged Spain who’s reached England and is doing slave labour on a rooftop sewing clothes. A quarter of the way through the book, he escapes, and the rest follows his journey after that. It’s all in first-person, with every second chapter told by him and the others each by a different character. We hear from the traffickers and employers of undocumented slave laborers, an undercover cop, and a simulant. That was interesting if unsavory - I would’ve liked to hear from his parents, who he lost on the way to England.

I did not like the book. It says that the first few chapters were originally a novella, and it does feel like that  - there’s no forward movement in the rest of the plot. I probably shouldn’t spoil, but it involves a lot of indentured labour and is depressing. It doesn’t even have the kind of depressing ending of Only Ever Yours by Louise O’ Neill, which was heartbreaking but gorgeous. For one thing, I didn’t relate to or feel for Caleb the way I did for the MC in OEY.

There aren’t highs, or hope - just this sad grind without a break, and an ending that suggests human trafficking is the best option. There’s a scene where a fellow immigrant vineyard worker (he doesn’t know her) dies of dehydration in front of him - moral: everything sucks? - and then he steals her necklace (and so do you?). There are also random advanced technological bits that seem to be there just to make it sci-if because they don’t matter to the plot.

When I picked it up I thought it was YA initially, but it isn't - the main character is twelve for most of the time, and half of the book is told by adults, plus you don't have that YA experience of a close relationship with the main character.

Was the idea of the book to send the message that climate change sucks, that if we don’t fix it now things won’t be magically okay afterwards? Because, you know, I'm aware.

The book gets points for being about climate change, for decent writing on the sentence level, and for being short. It comes out in January 2020.