Peckham, a town in London, is split into four areas. There’s the condos and semi-detached homes of the wealthy, the apartments bought for kids of the wealthy, the middle of the road neighbourhood, and the furthest from the Thames, The Ends. Estate housing. Rough. Dangerous after dark. Hardworking and poor.

Esso‘s home with his mum is in the Ends. There are two key gangs in the area and Esso has friends in both. While hanging out with his mate from one gang, Esso is suddenly caught up in something that makes him a target of his best friend in the other. He is trying to figure out how to diffuse the situation, when he is struck by a car.

He travels somewhere else, a different reality – where he sees snippets of himself and Nadia, the girl he likes from school. He hears a name cried out, then another vision of hail, gunfire and death sears inside his brain. He wakes from the accident and picking himself up, sore but no bones broken, sets off for school. He’s quickly back to worrying how to avoid the fallout of being caught between two gangs.

Rhia lives 15 years in the future, is a promising football player, and has been raised from very young in the National foster care system. Firm conditions apply to the football club she wants to be signed by, and exam results are part of them. Needing help with physics and maths, her foster mum has arranged a new tutor for her.

Annoyed more than anything with this extra work, Rhia finds her tutor’s style of teaching interesting. Little does she realise that he may be the answer to what she’s been searching for her whole life. Information about her mum. All she has is a photo of her birth mother sitting on a park bench. But Rhia has something her tutor needs too. Something he’s waited 15 years for.

These dual narratives are seamlessly woven together (each shift in POV shown by different fonts and chapter headings), drawing them to a point in time that determines everything. Maths and physics bind this story and are the structure of The Upper World – a place apart from the world we know. A place where time stands still. Does that mean we can move time, mould it how we want it?

The character’s lives are moulded in a very short time by decisions, loyalties, codes and rules.

The T.A.S (Think After Shooting) Gang have honour to uphold and a rival gang leader is so volatile he’s called Spark.

This story is just like a lit fuse – beginning with a spark and heading for destruction, no matter how the main character tries to change it.

Soon to be a Netflix Movie, The Upper World is mind-bending stuff, and nothing like I’ve read before. Time Travel is made possible, questions answered, lives lost and found. Incredible.

Author – Femi Fadugba

Age – 16+

(2021, Penguin, Time travel, Science, Physics, Maths, Gangs, Honour, Slang, London, Future, Football, Foster care, Netflix, Friendship, Growing up, Tutoring, Technology, Alternate Dimension, Brothers, Siblings, School, Conflict, Violence)