'These are troubling times. The world is a dangerous place,' the voice of the Chairman said. 'I can continue to assure you of this: within the Wall you are perfectly safe.'
'Christine could not sleep, she could not wake, she could not think. She stared, half-blind, at the cold screen of her smartphone. She was told the Agency was keeping them safe from the dangers outside, an outside world she would never see.
'She never imagined questioning what she was told, what she was allowed to know, what she was permitted to think. She never even thought there were questions to ask.
'The enclave was the only world she knew, the world outside was not safe. Staying or leaving was not a choice she had the power to make. But then Christine dared start thinking . . . and from that moment, danger was everywhere.
'In our turbulent times, Claire G. Coleman's Enclave is a powerful dystopian allegory that confronts the ugly realities of racism, homophobia, surveillance, greed and privilege and the self-destructive distortions that occur when we ignore our shared humanity.' (Publication summary)
Author's note: For Lily always
For Robert, I owe you so much
and
For all our trans & queer sibs, you matter.
(Introduction)
'A dystopian future that bears too scary a resemblance to certain contemporary realities.'
'John Clare was the great poet of “enclosure”. Unlike other major Romantic writers, he was of the peasantry – he lived through a period during which lands once held for the benefit of all were privatised in the name of “improving” agricultural productivity. Such commons were fenced off and patrolled against encroachment:
'There once were lanes in nature’s freedom dropt,
There once were paths that every valley wound –
Inclosure came, and every path was stopt;
Each tyrant fix’d his sign where paths were found,
To hint a trespass now who cross’d the ground…' (Introduction)
'I was reading Noongar author Claire G. Coleman’s third novel, Enclave, a few days after the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade judgement, a political victory for a conservative project many years in the making.' (Introduction)
(Introduction)
