From its iconic theme park to a sex scene in the Shell Grotto, new novel Dreamland brings Margate to life with its coming-of-age love story.

But set in the near future, its author also imagines what could happen to the seaside town as the threat of rising sea levels looms ever closer - echoing the frightening predictions of Kent climate scientists.

Rosa Rankin-Gee, who lives in Ramsgate, decided to steer clear of the typical dystopian tropes – think zombie apocalypses and robot overlords – in favour of a more realistic depiction of what might happen as the sea continues to reclaim the land.

She said: "It's not that they're in canoes going down Love Lane. It's not that in the slightest.

"I just took real-world social policies and happenings and put them five, 10 years into the future."

The story follows Chance and her family, who are forced to move from London to Thanet because they can no longer afford to live in the capital.

The sea is as beautiful as mum Jas remembers – but it's much higher than it used to be.

Rising sea levels have stamped on Margate's hopes of a return to its seaside holiday heydays and those wealthy enough to escape the rising water have long left.

The 34-year-old said: "This kind of warp-speed gentrification that's happening right now has kind of ended because the sea's level is rising, so lots of people who have the means to move are moving inland.

"There are many ways in which protections can be put in place to prevent this stuff happening.

"But Dreamland (the theme park) is pretty much under sea level. So it's one of the first places that would fill in freak weather events."

Today is Earth Day, when people across the world are taking time to think about the consequences of not protecting the environment and stalling climate change.

The Kent Community Foundation has used the annual event to launch its Environmental Strategy to help fund initiatives that will keep our towns and countryside protected in the decades to come.

But Rosa has taken her book's narrative even further and imagined what the knock-on effects of a rising sea level could be for Margate's people.

She depicts a Thanet stunned by economic depression and poverty - an area which today already experiences some of the highest levels of child poverty in the south east.

She said: "[In the book] Britain is moving towards a kind of like federalized nation where local areas have to pay for their own services with local taxes, which allows places which are very rich to be abundantly funded and places that aren't rich to basically be cut off.

"Two of the wards in Margate are in the top 10% most deprived in the UK, so you're dealing with that proximity to power and proximity to money but being absolutely cut off from it.

"The power balance often goes in one direction - the people with money and power can enjoy the sea when they want to but the people who live there full-time can't necessarily go in the other direction."

But Rosa wanted to make it clear that the story is not negative about the seaside town, a place which has become the North-Londoner's adoptive home.

She said: "This book is in no way critical of Margate, it's suffused with love for the place, for my home.

"I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. If it's critical of anything, it's government policies that may lead us in directions that already are kind of dystopian."

In the author's note at the back, Rosa reminds her readers of Margate's complex balance of poverty and growing wealth.

"This book is in no way critical of Margate, it's suffused with love for the place, for my home..."

It includes the record number of visitors to the town in 2019, its burgeoning arts scene and cash injection into the economy.

But it also cites climbing house prices which price those with less money out of the area – the average house price in Margate has increased by more than 40% in the past five years.

The novel is described by publisher Scribner as "a postcard from a future Britain that’s closer than we think".

Despite the story's glum outlook, however, Rosa says there is a hope for change built into the story - a hope she believes exists throughout the entire of the Thanet community.

She said: "I've got a quote from Tracy Emin at the beginning of the book, from when the Dreamland lights were switched on for the first time in 2017.

"[It says] 'Just the word Dreamland, it can't get much better than that, can it?' I think that that captures something. There's so much hope baked into things.

"I think that hope is a beautiful thing and I feel it too, I live here, but it can so frequently be defeated, it's imbalanced constantly."

Earlier this week Boris Johnson pledged a new target for the UK to cut its greenhouse emissions by nearly four-fifths by 2035.

But The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also predicted a huge surge in CO2 emissions from energy this year, as the entire world bounces backs from the pandemic.

Alongside climate change activists such as Greta Thunberg and the ever-growing Extinction Rebellion movement, a story like this imagines the effects of climate change at a much more local level - making the possible future all the more frighteningly real.

Rosa added: "You actually don't have to imagine anything to write at British dystopia – and to be so patently clear, I don't want what's in this book to happen."

To find out more about the book, click here

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