Sam North’s novel is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, in which Verona’s high society becomes London’s underworld. It is also a novel about alienation from mainstream society and the impossibility of decisive action in the face of destiny. North’s characters are fatally impotent and seem unable to shape their future. Despite their efforts, they are shaken by forces that seem out of their control. The whole novel is a struggle between the lovers’ aspirations for a better future, and the forces set against them, with the dark side finally and inevitably prevailing.

The plot, and the men, revolve around beautiful 15-year-old caravan-dweller Mila Rosapepe, a mature-beyond-her-age Romanian gypsy with a fake P45 to work at Tesco. Mila is the only truly positive force in the novel. She sparks with vitality and has high aspirations for a great future with her boyfriend, Nio. She’s streetwise, but makes one fatal mistake; she believes Jon Rawle, alias Lucas Tooth, the archetypal villain, whose cruelty and sexual depravity lie hidden behind expensive designer suits.

Lucas has raped Anjali, an Asian student, who proceeds to become a modern fallen woman as the novel unravels. At first, Anjali struggles between a sort of anaesthetic apathy and the urge to act and report the rape, but her negative feelings finally take over. As a result, she drops out of university, abandons her family and starts sleeping in the tube exit tunnel where she finds comfort in the shape of a laconic tattooed beggar.

Throughout the novel, as if by magic, the different stories intertwine. The symbolic hand-made bag Anjali intentionally leaves behind with her old life, becomes Mila’s. And so does Anjali’s persecutor, Lucas Tooth, who lures Mila with promises of a glamorous modelling career. Will Mila succumb too?

Lucas is set against Nio Niopolous, Mila’s almost unbelievably naïve 23 year-old boyfriend who lives in a shack he’s built in St Pancras cemetery. While Lucas lies to Mila and sees her as a sexual plaything, Nio is Mila’s knight in shining armour; he won’t have sex with her until she’s 16, and he engages in an everyday struggle to succeed as an artist and mould a better life for Mila and himself.

Nio’s urge to give a better future to the girl he loves conflicts with his fear of failure because of circumstances outside his control, and he comes to see life as an endless struggle against the material obstacles to his happiness and fulfilment, viewing society’s values as contaminating rather than inspiring. He doesn’t want money, fame or position; all he wants is the better future that appears infinitely beyond his reach. Nio’s psychological battle with a sense of the un-heroic nature of life epitomises the sad but widespread feelings of frustration and impotence of the modern individual.

Like a painting, North’s enthralling narrative style depicts drab neighbourhoods of solitude and squalor in a gloomy tone that sets the scene for the disaster to come. The Unnumbered makes for a swift and refreshing read despite North’s fragmented, incomplete characters, his patronising emphasis on the vulnerability of women and the at times irritating leitmotif of the inability to shape one’s future. Anjali’s fall as a result of her rape seems unnecessarily depressing and unrealistic. The reader can’t help thinking ‘Anjali, wake up and take responsibility for your life!’ But then, North’s novel is all about human impotence. It is an ode to man’s stunning imperfection, and as such, reminds us of the need for motivation and inspiration in our lives.