Set partially in the 23rd century, but mostly in 2016, Two Tribes follows the story of Zoe, a historian looking back on Brexit through the writings of two diaries which have survived from the era. One belongs to Harry, an upper middle class architect living in London, while the other has been written by Michelle, a working class woman from a less prosperous UK town. When Harry and Michelle cross paths in the aftermath of the EU referendum, each of their strongly held world views are called into question. If you're thinking of picking up this book because you enjoy a good sci-fi/ dystopia, this is not the novel for you. The 23rd century setting works excellently as a means of creating distance between the researcher Zoe and her subject, Brexit, allowing Beckett to add a somewhat emotionally disconnected perspective on the referendum debate. The sections of the book set in Beckett's future Britain are intriguing but never fully elaborated on. We're offered only a glimpse, adding nothing more to the story than a longer-term context to today's social discourse. The social commentary in this book is incredibly well observed, for the most part. The repetition of slogans and key phrases being sounded into insular echo chambers on both sides of the Brexit debate is highlighted effectively. Discourse on classism in the UK and the unequal distribution of power and wealth is astute. Harry, a wealthy and inherently middle class 'remainer', meets Michelle, a working class 'leaver' and falls almost immediately in love and reassesses everything he's ever believed about Brexit and society at large. This creates a great opportunity for Beckett to discuss many of the apparent 'truisms' bandied about on both sides, and offers some interesting observations. It also, however, makes Harry almost insufferable as a character. Now conflicted, he continually obtusely challenges everyone and anyone on their views, which does begin to grate. His conversations with Michelle are so condescending and class-obsessed that I was forever willing her to give him whatfor. Their chemistry was entirely lost on me, except for what they offered in terms of narrative progression. This novel had me thinking constantly, and offered some valuable insights into the Brexit debacle. As a story, it had a couple of flaws - some narrative streams strangely trickled into nothing, the ending was fairly abrupt and the dialogue between characters was ocassionally unnatural. But as a reading experience, this book had me hooked.

Reading for me is all about escapism. Particularly at the moment with my industry in free-fall after Covid-19, I’m using reading as a heavy distraction from the utter craziness of politics and the insane world going on around me at the moment. A book based on Brexit therefore, was in hindsight, not particularly the best choice of ARC to request! However, I was drawn in by the apocalyptic angle, the idea of events we are in the middle of right now shaping the future was interesting. I also liked the idea of future historians looking back on our choices and trying to work out what we were thinking and where key choices had been made in our timeline to affect theirs. Two Tribes for me fails on all counts. The apocalyptic angle that I had been most interested in was completely side-lined. We understand the Chinese are in charge, there’s been some flooding and a new government with ‘nine principles’ and there’s talk of soldiers that can see all of your personal details at a glance. That is about the full extent of the world-building given to the reader and we know even less about the two historians – just their names and their jobs with a bit of romance thrown in extremely last minute. It’s so shallow and so undefined and so… disappointing. Give me a world to be engrossed in – if you’re making the point that Brexit started something so massive that it’s still being looked at when the world is half destroyed in 250 years time then show me that world! Instead of focussing on the future element of the book, the author instead mainly focuses on Brexit and flashbacks of our main characters in the past through ‘diary entries’. There’s Harry who is a Remainer and massively unlikeable - he is ashamed of his girlfriend because she dares to have different viewpoints as him, is upper-class and self centred and makes some truly awful statements that made me want to throw my Kindle out of the window (and I’m on his political side!). There’s Michelle, a Leaver who is an uneducated hairdresser who unfortunately crosses paths with Harry. She is also not very fleshed out; I wanted to actually know more about why she felt the way she did, but the author just ended up speaking in clichés for most of her inner reasoning. We then also get a few other side-characters who are around for a chapter or two including Charlie, a clueless lad who gets drawn into an EDL like club. The book is supposed to have been scraped together by the future historians from diary entries and glimpses of their social media accounts which are still inexplicably available to view. This is unrealistic on so many counts – how many people do you know at the moment that write in a diary? How many of those people who write diaries write them in such a detailed way that you could recreate the scene down to the minute detail? The author has tried to be clever here by saying the historian made up some details and padded the accounts using artistic license. This is someone living 250 years in the future - surely they would be unable to seamlessly patch stories together without in-depth knowledge of the time. I think of all the slang I don’t know that the generation before me use on a daily basis and vice versa – there’s no way someone from the future could fill in those gaps without it being instantly noticeable by someone living in the time. This could have been a really nice little touch – words and phrases used that perhaps didn’t make sense and created more of an insight into the future world but was a missed opportunity. This book didn’t teach me anything I didn’t know about Brexit, this book didn’t challenge my way of thinking, this book didn’t paint me an interesting picture of a possible future now that the decision has been made and this book didn’t make me feel anything but anger for its poorly drawn, cliched and unlikeable characters. This book, in short, was not for me. Thank you to NetGalley & Atlantic Books – Corvus for the chance to read the ARC of Two Tribes in exchange for a (very) honest review.