The Scavenger's Tale

Things can only get better? Not if we share the futuristic vision of this novel, set in 2015 in a London where the poor, the dispossessed and the dysfunctional are at the mercy of their Community Health and Welfare Monitors, agents who have a sinister link with the tourists thronging the capital. Focusing on the fight for survival of the various members of the household presided over by the redoubtable Ma Peddle, this novel poses endless questions about our responses to those generally called 'misfits' --- and offers little hope that we shall ever comfortably accommodate them. It is a worthwhile, if harrowing, read, in which moments of dark humour lighten the prevailing bleakness.