Review: The World I Found

I was intrigued by the cover of this novel, with its circular illustration echoing the ‘world’ of the title; the backpack-wearing youth staring out at the changing landscape, where one would guess they are about to venture and see what they can find.

Quinn, 15, is being dragged away from her best friend Frankie, and city life in Wellington, to isolated Campbell Island, where her scientist mother is to work for a year. Quinn is grumpy about it but makes friends with one of the younger scientists. I was looking forward to finding out about Campbell Island and exploring it through Quinn’s experience but in quick succession we learn that communications are down, Greenpeace’s Arctic Star arrives, also bringing Jeroen, the attractive son of one of the scientists. There are strange, garbled messages from the mainland – ‘something terrible … global … very quickly … risky’ leading to everyone leaving the island and heading for home.

On the journey home a huge storm hits and Quinn and Jeroen are swept away into the sea. They luckily wash up together on a remote Wairarapa Beach where a young boy, Cal, 12, and his dog Pirate, find them and take the pair home, where he’s living alone since his grandfather went to town and didn’t come back. There’s been scary news on TV about a virus sweeping the world before the power and phone were cut off.

They make a great trio and when they head off to see if they can find our more, it’s Cal who has the driving skills to get them on the road. Apart from a single interaction with a religious nutter on the side of the road there is no one to be seen until they find an old couple living off the land in an isolated homestead. Jack and Robyn are friendly and welcoming, taking the trio in and teaching them the skills required to keep them all fed. I would have expected a little more suspicion and antagonism from the couple, considering the state of the nation but they happily enlarge their household.

Everything changes when they discover a group of people, including men with guns, living in an old campground. After seeing Quinn’s best friend there, she can’t resist running to see her and the young people all end up being taken in to The Community, a cult-like set-up with a leader who conveniently sends people to work on ‘the farm’ when they cause trouble.

So much sounds familiar, right? I guess there are going to be a multitude of pandemic-themed books in our reading future. Mention is given to the 2020 Covid pandemic and this new un-named virus being much worse, though it seemed unrealistic to me that with the number of people who are reported to have died in a short time, our characters never come across victims of the illness; the population seems to have simply disappeared.

The story moves along mostly at a good pace - though I felt as trapped in The Community as Quinn did - but it somehow lacks depth with many instances of things conveniently, but perhaps unrealistically, working out. There are some lovely moments of thoughtful reflection and communication that give a genuine tone to the characters and their relationships. I expect conversations will be generated around sustainability. How would you survive in these circumstances?

This is Wellington author Latika Vasil’s first YA novel, and she’s included a lot of her local landscape here. She’s had a number of short stories published, and I look forward to seeing her fiction repertoire grow and develop.

Reviewed by Crissi Blair