Alice Robinson’s If You Go entwines the intimate and the dystopic, in the vein of her previous two works of fiction, but she dials both modes up a notch here. If You Go is the only of her novels written in first person and is also the one set the furthest into the future, in a time when cryogenic technology has advanced exponentially.
The opening pages introduce us to Esther, who wakes in an unknown, underground location with a breathing tube down her throat and sensors attached to her “like octopus suckers”. For a good portion of the book, it is unclear what this vaguely institutional setting is. Equally perplexing is what has befallen Esther, or her two young children – a mystery that injects the narrative with a real propulsive quality and a mounting tension.
