It is 2050 in Melbourne. The seas have risen, full of accidental genetic mixtures and cloned versions of extinct favourites, while the land is dried out and life is a tense combination of techno-affluence, terror, and normality.

This is the world the characters in Lisa Jacobson’s submarine, emotive verse novel inhabit – almost a dystopia, but not quite. The central character, North, lives a life blighted by the drowning of her sister, Finn, left unwatched while North was distracted by adolescent beach-fumblings. The novel moves with North through the depths of grief and guilt, seeking the light, while the world becomes more and more watery around her.