If it is drama and violence you are after, there is certainly plenty here, once you have passed the more careful and interesting scene set. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
Giles Foden is best known for his novel The Last King of Scotland, which was made into a successful film. With Thirst, he is using an African setting again, though this time it is Namibia rather than Uganda.
And while
this novel opens in 2014, the main part of the story takes place in the future,
in 2039.
It is a novel of two parts – not just in time but also in the plotting and the writing which is somewhat uneven.
It opens with Catherine Brosnan, an Irish climate scientist, visiting the remote town of Dekmantel in the Namib desert to try to find a major aquifer that is rumoured to lie under the desert sands. But if it is to be found where Catherine thinks it is, she needs to have permission, and an escort, from the Chinese who control the area as part of their mining zone. And so Catherine and Captain Xin set off into the desert. And what they find there is not an aquifer, but a possible, if somewhat sinister, clue to its existence.
But Catherine returns to Ireland – damp and cool Kerry which is about as removed from Namibia as it is possible to get. She stays there to bring up her daughter Cat – a memento of her Namibian adventure – until the younger Brosnan is at university, also studying climate science. And then Catherine heads back to Namibia and disappears.
Come 2039 and off Cat goes to Namibia, hoping to find her mother, the aquifer and more about herself. Dekmantel is now disputed territory between American and Chinese mining companies, with the locals being sidelined and exploited, and various militias competing for turf. Almost inevitably, the heavies and protectors of the mining interests are ruthless white Afrikaners – they make handy baddies in this kind of fiction. The water supply is being gobbled up by the mines, the situation is dire and the novel is now a full-on action thriller.
When the water dries up completely, Cat joins an ill-assorted group of refugee locals, militias and others and heads into the desert. She is still looking for the aquifer and her mother, while others are looking for survival. But they are faced with heavily-armed bad guys, man-eating lions and implacable nature itself.
The action is so fast and furious that it becomes faintly ridiculous, and I found it difficult to care very much about most of the characters who too often are mere stereotypes. And Cat, as the central figure, never really comes to life on the page. But if it is drama and violence you are after, there is certainly plenty here, once you have passed the more careful and interesting scene set. - Margaret von Klemperer
Thirst is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-2978-6822-4
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