The Most Natural Thing in the World

'Sealed' by Naomi Booth (Dead Ink, 2017)

I love it when publishers put a shout out for book bloggers on Twitter.  This has led me to some absolutely incredible books, books that I would never have known about otherwise, let alone read.  'Sealed' by Naomi Booth is just one example.

'Sealed'
by Naomi Booth
(Dead Ink, 2017)

When the heavily-pregnant Alice and her laid-back partner, Pete, move out of the city to a remote house in the mountains, they believe it's a fresh start.  Away from urban pollution and the deadly skin-sealing disease it may be causing, they hope that they can put tragedy and worry behind them and prepare a safe home for the new arrival.  But the grass isn't always greener, and not only does their new location provide new dangers, old ones prove hard to escape too...


This book absolutely blew me away.  Set in a near but very plausible future, it draws on a number of current hot topics - air pollution, anxiety, extreme weather, the role of the state, fake news - teases them out and weaves them back together into a story so relatable it's hard not to feel that this is a terrifying truth rather than a expertly crafted piece of fiction.  In a way, I started to feel sealed into the narrative myself and, by the bloody, heart pounding, shocking end, I was unable to look away, no matter how much I wanted to.

The highly tense ending felt by no means inevitable, however.  Booth deftly drip feeds background information so that it's hard to tell who is behaving sanely in this insane situation for much of the novel.  Is it better to be aware and anxious about everything or ignorant and therefore worried about nothing?

Reading this book, several other great stories sprang to mind.  The first novel I thought of was the superlative 'Bird Box' (No idea what the film is like, but the book is fantastic!), initially because both feature pregnant heroines in very threatening situations, but also because it sits in a similar horror-science fiction genre.  By the end, however, I felt that 'Sealed' could sit comfortably alongside big names like 'The Handmaid's Tale', 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and 'Brave New World'.  All these novels have important things to say about the nature of humanity, power and society, but none of them have had the physical impact on me as a reader that 'Sealed' has.  While it's older cousins have made me think, the experience felt more distanced, like an academic exercise.  'Sealed' is much more practical - I gasped, my heart pounded, I welled up and I shouted.  I found it impossible not to react to its intensity.  Perhaps this is what reading 'The Handmaid's Tale' was like in 1985.

Overall, while 'Sealed' really isn't for the faint hearted (Honestly, it's so stressful!  And not a good choice for mums to be.), it's a landmark in the genre.  You may not want to re-read it, but it will stay with you for a long time, and you'll find it hard not to watch the news and think "What if...?"

Now, what next..?

'Sealed' was published in 2017 by Dead Ink.  I received a copy free of charge.