Alice's Dérives in Devonshire

Alice's Drives in Devonshire follows a nine-year-old girl (Alice) as she does just that, walking her way into the layered and muddy underbelly of Devonshire, urban and rural:

"Can a city fall to bits one day and put itself back together the next?

I think so, but I am crazy. So why should you believe me? Dad says it's OK to be mad. Bad is the problem.

And the city is bad. I saw its badness. For one day its glass was everywhere like broken teeth after a fight between lions and sharks. Big buildings leaning on each other like drunk dinosaurs. The new shopping centre was a cave full of smoke. And everyone was frightened of each other.

But I wasn't frightened. I could see that between the pieces of glass were shining gaps. And in the biggest building were passageways and tunnels and I could see that that was the good city. The city of holes and caves. Between the bad was the good, but only if you knew that before you looked.

A little while later - I'm not sure how long because that was when I was ill again - the bigger cities burned for real; life had a really bad dream. By then, though, I knew that the cities were always ruins, no matter what they looked like. And that you had to know how to see fire to find warmth."