A charming coming-of-age novel about what it means to grow up and find family amongst strangers, set against the backdrop of a dystopian regime and shaped by themes of drug abuse, gang violence, and personal responsibility.
Meet Brooklyn Beaumont, Nottingham’s newly minted novelist, and the author of Huckleberry Dreaming. The title itself is a neologism: a playful twist on the phrase huckleberry friend, meaning a companion who arrives just when you need them most. That notion of found family runs through the heart of Beaumont’s novel. Her protagonist, Carney, encounters strangers who become allies, discovering friendship and family in the least expected places. Together, they give him what he’s been searching for: someone to rebel with.
Rebellion is naturally a huge theme to Huckleberry Dreaming as a dystopic novel– Carney’s own mind rebels against him as he gets to grips with life in jail, hallucinogenic medications, and ‘Distraction Therapy’. Ultimately, this therapy blasts through everything Carney thinks he knows– gradually unveiling the corrupt regimes on Planet Banunus through Doran’s embedded story.
Doran is a runaway orphan: leaving Maple Road Children’s Home to find a chosen family in the form of a vagabond girl, a scuttling raven, and the flute-playing Captain of The Dreamcatcher. This captain, Humbucker, was my favourite– a character drawn from Beaumont’s university days. She writes that his real life parallel was ‘an eccentric physics professor who dressed like a Bohemian poet. He had a real counterculture vibe, which I tried hard to capture in the book’. One way in which Beaumont captures this counterculture vibe is by detailing Humbucker’s musicality– characterising him through a unique blend of Mozart’s Flute Concerto Number Two in D Major and Pink Floyd. This unlikely bunch later introduces Doran to The Shadow Dwellers, a group of sewer-dwelling teen vigilantes.
But as Carney learns more about Doran’s life and his enlistment into The Shadow Dwellers, he increasingly suspects that this boy-rebel story from Magnatella, the continent that no one ever comes back from, might be a true recollection of his forgotten memories…
Which raises questions, does Carney belong in this cell? And did he really assault his ‘best buddy’?
Huckleberry Dreaming doesn’t just comment on individual identity, it speculates about what our future could be like 300 years from now: where after The Leptotronic War, Earth has become a slum, from which only the lucky can escape to colonise the planet Banunus. But even on Planet Banunus, inequality persists, perhaps speaking to a persistent selfishness within human nature. Beaumont presents a physical and ideological divide between the two continents on the planet Banunus. Magnatella, is a wealthy and technologically advanced continent built up by scientists, whereas Cassaforta, is a continent established by pacifist rebels painted in the image of 1950s America. If you can imagine a 1950s America without televisions, that is.
You might not guess it, but both places are geographically inspired by Earth’s own rebel city: Nottingham. The Pallindrolin Canal and Matapetus Waterfront of Magnatella’s capital, Banunus City, were drawn roughly from the Nottingham Castle Waterside and Marina. As for Cassaforta, Beaumont divulged that she had the River Trent, specifically the side of Nottingham Trent’s Clifton Campus, in mind when writing about the creek and surrounding areas of Hailey’s Town:
"I used to take long walks along the riverbank during my student days. In the novel, I wanted to convey how much the creek meant to Carney, my protagonist, and how deeply it was woven into his memories of youth. It was a place where he and his loyal bunch of friends could be close to nature, hang out, and have a blast—all within a five-minute walk of where they lived and studied.”
Beaumont has long been entwined with Nottingham, with the city remaining “the quiet pulse” to her creative life for “decades," and gifting her “the space to imagine, to observe, and to write”. She first came to the city as a student at Nottingham Trent University but Huckleberry Dreaming began even before her university days here:
"Huckleberry Dreaming began life as a short story that I typed in 1988, while waiting to attend university in Nottingham. I suppose the themes of small towns and sprawling cities were already stirring—maybe I was wondering what it would feel like to live in a big city. I didn’t return to the manuscript until late 2020, but I’m still here in Nottingham, 37 years after my degree, because it’s simply the best city in the world.”
Beaumont fittingly ends her Huckleberry Dreaming with her characters heading off to university, mirroring the position she was in when she first began imagining their story. In the finale, Carney reconciles himself to the fickle nature of moments, which are a ‘real mixed bag’, but ‘when you string them all together and start to pick out the gems’, it allows you to understand that, ‘even though we’re stumbling about in the dark, life can be wonderful’. This philosophy is evident throughout Beaumont’s novel, as she picks out gems from Carney and Doran’s life, jumping forward and backwards in time to illustrate the beautifully fragmented experience of becoming an adult.
And so, if you’re hankering to overthrow the government, or looking for tips to find family in the midst of a dystopia, Huckleberry Dreaming has everything you need! You can prepare yourself for Beaumont’s prophesied outbreak of The Leptotronic War by ordering the novel online at Troubador.
A Spotify playlist with all the music featured in Huckleberry Dreaming, along with a character and world guide can also be found here.
You can keep up to date with Brooklyn Beaumont via her Facebook page.
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
