It’s frustrating that, in tackling the Calais jungle, a world that, until October last year, teemed with all the pain, despair, hope and opportunity a captivating story would need, Pooja Puri’s The Jungle fails to wallop you.
Because a story like this should. It should shock, upset and mobilize readers; at the very least it should trigger some kind of emotional reaction.
But it doesn’t, even though our fairly well-drawn lead, Kenyan teenager and refugee Mico, is without his family, trying to scrape together a life amongst the tarpaulin, aggression and rubbish-strewn migrant camp.
We travel the settlement with him as he fixes up stolen bikes, plays peacekeeper between his disparate, desperate friends, and dodges the belligerent Ghost Men (people traffickers), but there’s little nuance – and even less depth – to his back story, or that of the characters he rattles between.
The introduction of the scrappy, yellow rucksack-wearing Leila, who spurs Mico on to look beyond the metal fencing of the jungle, doesn’t provide quite the catalyst to make the narrative zing either.
The Jungle doesn’t captivate or convince, and despite its potential, it’s just not powerful enough to get a real grip on you.