This ambitious novel, which follows a mother who wakes up in the future without her children, wrestles with complex existential questions
Alice Robinson’s If You Go entwines the intimate and the dystopic, in the vein of her previous two works of fiction, but she dials both modes up a notch here. If You Go is the only of her novels written in first person and is also the one set the furthest into the future, in a time when cryogenic technology has advanced exponentially.
The opening pages introduce us to Esther, who wakes in an unknown, underground location with a breathing tube down her throat and sensors attached to her “like octopus suckers”. For a good portion of the book, it is unclear what this vaguely institutional setting is. Equally perplexing is what has befallen Esther, or her two young children – a mystery that injects the narrative with a real propulsive quality and a mounting tension.
