To Keep Us All Safe by Stephen Ford - REVIEW
Stephen Ford’s To Keep Us All Safe is a masterful blend of dystopian fiction and social commentary, set in a Britain reshaped by the Chimapox lockdown. Not a distant, futuristic dystopia – but one chillingly close to home.
The story centres on Jim, a man juggling the burden of caring for his relatives while negotiating the suffocating rules imposed by the virus. Daily life is defined by QR code permits, patrol volunteers, and constant surveillance — a society where even meeting a girl he falls in love with is fraught with restrictions. Ford exquisitely captures the small humiliations and quiet acts of defiance that shape ordinary lives under extraordinary control.
The lockdown world Jim inhabits is eerily familiar: a society gripped by fear, reshaped by authoritarian decrees, and justified at every step by the refrain of ‘keeping people safe’. Against this backdrop, the novel unfolds as a mosaic of stories and encounters, each one exploring the fragile line between freedom and safety.
Ford’s strengths as a storyteller lie in his ability to blend the intimate and lifelike with the political. Jim’s frustrations, moral compromises, and tentative romance with Lily — a free-spirited pagan whose presence is both liberating and dangerous — bring warmth and humanity to the cold mechanisms of control. Their secret meetings in the allotment shed are at once tender and heartbreaking, a reminder that love and resilience persist even in the harshest conditions.
Alfie, Jim’s neighbour, offers moments of levity and solidarity, while Marjorie, the officious landlady, embodies the petty authoritarianism that thrives in times of fear. None of the characters feel like stock figures; even those aligned with the oppressive system are driven by recognisable motivations — fear, survival, the desire for control. This human complexity and the authenticity of the characters is one of the novel’s quiet triumphs.
The allotment itself emerges as a potent symbol of resistance. In a world of QR codes and curfews, the earth still offers a kind of stubborn freedom. Here, among soil and seedlings, Ford stages acts of quiet rebellion: planting food, sharing moments of laughter, or daring to reach for intimacy. The contrast between this fragile sanctuary and the sterile, surveilled environment outside underscores the novel’s central tension: the struggle between personal liberty and enforced safety.
Ford’s world-building is chillingly plausible. He draws on details that feel pulled from the edge of recent memory — the lockdown patrols, the clipped bureaucratic announcements, the casual acceptance of draconian rules. These elements ground the story in reality, making the dystopia all the more unsettling. The effect is not one of escapist fantasy but of a mirror held uncomfortably close to our own times. Readers will recognise the echoes of recent events, but Ford pushes them further, showing how fear, once harnessed by authority, can normalise restrictions that might once have seemed unthinkable.
The pacing is brisk yet measured. Each chapter presents a fresh angle — a new character, a moral dilemma, an encounter with authority — and together they build a mosaic of life under lockdown. This episodic structure keeps the narrative lively, while the recurring themes tie it into a coherent whole. The balance between story and message is deftly handled: Ford never pauses to preach, but the critique of power and control seeps through every scene.
What stands out most is the novel’s emotional honesty. Jim is not a flawless hero; he sulks, compromises, and occasionally falters under the weight of his responsibilities. But it is precisely his ordinariness that makes him compelling. His small victories — sneaking time with Lily, sharing a joke with Alfie, planting a row of seedlings — feel hard won, reminders that dignity and humanity survive in small acts even when larger freedoms are eroded.
Ford’s writing is clear, vivid, and unpretentious. He has a gift for evoking atmosphere with economical detail: the smell of damp earth in the allotment shed, the unease of passing through a checkpoint, the intimacy of a whispered conversation. His prose avoids heavy-handedness, allowing the reader to inhabit the world and draw their own conclusions. That restraint is one of the book’s quiet strengths; it respects the intelligence of its audience.
Though the novel is sobering in its depiction of control and fear, it never collapses into despair and is laced with brilliant moments of humour. There is hope in Jim’s persistence, in Lily’s defiance, in the camaraderie of neighbours who refuse to give in completely. The book suggests that resilience lies not only in grand gestures but in small acts of care and connection. It reminds us that even under suffocating systems, humanity asserts itself in stubborn, unexpected ways.
To Keep Us All Safe is, at its core, a cautionary tale. It warns of the dangers of trading liberty for the promise of safety, of accepting extraordinary measures as permanent fixtures, of allowing fear to silence dissent. But it is also a story of resilience and love, of ordinary people navigating extraordinary circumstances. That duality — bleakness intertwined with hope — is what makes the novel so compelling.
Ford has written a book that is both timely and timeless. Timely, because its echoes of recent global crises are unmistakable. Timeless, because the questions it raises — about freedom, control, and the cost of safety — are perennial ones. It is a novel that entertains, unsettles, and provokes in equal measure.
By the final page, readers will feel they have not just observed a dystopia but lived within it, sharing the frustrations and small triumphs of Jim and those around him. That immersion is Ford’s greatest achievement: he does not simply describe a world but builds one that feels frighteningly real.
To Keep Us All Safe is much more than a dystopian narrative. It is a mirror held up to our fears, our sneakily extorted compromises, and our resilience. It asks us to look closely at the language of safety, to question who benefits from it, and to remember what is lost when freedoms are bartered away. It is a novel that lingers, whispering questions long after the final letter has been read.
