Doggerland by Ben Smith – review

A boy investigates his father’s death in this skilful debut novel set on a vast coastal wind farm

For a landmass subsumed by the North Sea some 8,000 years ago, Doggerland, the area that once connected Great Britain to mainland Europe, is enjoying a resurgence of interest. Last month saw the publication of Julia Blackburn’s well-received Time Song: Searching for Doggerland, and hot on its heels comes Doggerland, Ben Smith’s debut novel.

The attraction is obvious – after all, what better geography to explore in our Brexit world? – and Smith creates a landscape of brutality with great skill. From this lost terrain, he also wrings a complex human drama, exploring humanity’s place in the natural world, as well as the systems that attempt to place order on our lives.

These claustrophobic, contained lives are reminiscent of Beckett or perhaps Pinter