'The Carbon Diaries 2015' by Saci Lloyd

I've literally only just finished this book but I've barely been able to put it down. Therefore this will be a slight rave review, be ye warned ;)

So 'The Carbon Diaries 2015' is a fictional diary by a teenage girl called Laura Brown in 2015. A big storm hits Britain in 2010, costing thousands of lives, and to combat global warming, the British government (Saci Lloyd is careful not to predict the outcome of the 2010 General Election, since this was written in 2008, so she just refers to 'the prime minister') makes the UK a guinea pig for a new carbon rationing system which means that life must change drastically for Brits. Add to this increasingly extreme weather conditions that are linked to the predicted results of global warming. But Laura doesn't care about that stuff: OK, it makes her life more difficult, but all she wants is a normal life where she can get decent results at college, play with her punk band and go out with the boy next door.

I don't respond well to preachy books, but the nice thing about 'The Carbon Diaries 2015' is any preaching it does is either very subtle or very obvious and put into the mouths of characters presented as self-righteous. But still, it gets the message across with terrifying alacrity. Where before I enjoyed apocalypse and disaster movies out of a kind of combination of schadenfreude, vicarious thrill and general amusement, now I don't want what happens in this book to happen to anyone, ever. Laura never turns round and says "Oh, God damn you, older generation! Why did you do this to us? Why?!!!" She grumbles that they were selfish, but she just deals with the way the world is because that's the only way to survive. The people she gets angry at are the people who continue to be selfish and make the world worse. Gradually, the trappings of civilisation fall away and people either sink or swim, but it's written in such a personal way that Lloyd never breaks the illusion that this is a real diary, about real people.

The style is natural and fun, though occasionally it strays into 'totally rad' territory with jargon that'll be dated pretty soon, and Laura presents the world she lives in with wit and wry observation. For instance, her friend gets stuck in John Lewis due to snow storms and power cuts. Laura's response? "Serves her right for being middle class." There are so many little moments where Laura expresses something I've thought but never said, and Lloyd really does tap into the zeitgeist of modern Britain, even if things do get a little unbelievable at times (Laura's parents, a couple of aging hippies, are taken a little too far). Not only that, but when it's time for pathos, Lloyd shows she can handle that admirably too. I'm not sure she succeeded in her aim of showing how a global crisis can pull people together (attempts to do so are treated with cynical humour) but she certainly shows how it strips away the pretences we put up to make our lives more interesting.

All I can say is, this book is amazing, and it really makes you want to both change the world and stock up the cupboard with tins and blankets. The thing is, 'The Carbon Diaries 2015' doesn't preach that whole 'changing the world one person at a time' shtick - what it presents is the necessity of a change in culture and mindset which, Lloyd suggests, is something that's not going to happen till it's almost too late.