reviews 14+Secondary/Adult continued Phantom HHHHH


Leo Hunt, Orchard Books, 414pp (including glossary), 987-1-40834-503-0, £7.99 pbk


Hunt sets this powerful novel dystopian future in a with populations


even more polarised than they are in contemporary society. Nova, a homeless orphan with phenomenal technological skills, is befriended by Patches, a horribly disfigured man who is a clever fixer, mover and shaker and put


to work leeching


money out of people’s bank accounts through their wristhubs, implanted technological devices which handle financial transactions and through which the neural transplants in everyone’s bodies are accessed. The reader is plunged headfirst into this unfamiliar and often shocking environment in which Nova lives and has to come to an understanding of it by immersion, rather like learning a foreign language quickly. And


what a language! provides a glossary but the


Hunt best


way to understand this world is to experience it first hand and that is what the reader has to do. The poor and disenfranchised live in the disused and derelict lower floors of the towering skyscrapers whose upper floors, away from the poisoned earth and water, the blind animals who have never seen daylight far below, are populated only by the rich and powerful. And the richest and most powerful of all is Grale Inselberg, who has made her father’s company, Bliss Inc, so untouchable that it has the potential to control the lives of all human beings. Nova feels that she has been given an


opportunity to change this world, to stop the annihilation of free-thinking people, to shape a fairer world for all-and she seizes it. However, Phantom, the most proficient of all users of technology uses her, Patches betrays her and she narrowly escapes with her life. However, in all this confusion and violence there are the seeds of hope for a better future. Nova falls in love with what she believes is Inselberg’s daughter but who is really an advanced A1: why should this love been valued any less than that which occurs elsewhere? Nova wins the battle to defeat Inselberg but realises that she cannot just abandon those in the Gut, where the disenfranchised live. She returns, but this time to lead the rebellion which she hopes will topple Bliss Inc for ever-and she brings together those people who have nothing to offer them the chance to change things for the better-and for good. This book is crying out for a sequel-


let’s hope that Hunt sees fit to write one, and soon. VR


What Girls Are Made Of HHHH


Elana K. Arnold, Andersen Press, 190pp, 978 1 78344 771 8, £7.99 pbk


“When I was fourteen, my mother told me that there was no such thing as


unconditional love. But I am not fourteen, and I am more than my mother’s daughter.” Nina is sixteen now and she ends her story with those lines. They return us to the novel’s first page and her mother’s disconcerting remark as she and Nina are folding laundry together. Mom will later deny she said any such thing, but Nina cannot forget her words. Thoughts about the conditions attached to different kinds of love preoccupy Nina throughout the novel. In a Note which follows Nina’s Elana


narrative, the


Arnold upon girls. explores


expectations society imposes Arnold insists, “You don’t


owe anyone a slice of your soul. Not your parents. Not your friends. Not your teachers or your lovers or your enemies.” The Note is a passionate five page essay which seems integral to the reading of the novel itself. Nina’s story reads like a memoir drawing on the emotional impact of experiences which Arnold, now in her forties, encountered when as young as eleven through to a chilling moment in her first year at college. The novel, she tells us, was born not only of anger about cultural demands upon girls in her youth – some of which remain in our present; it was also driven by an awareness of her own complicity in conforming to what was required of her as a girl growing up in the States. We follow Nina on several journeys


into her memories, culminating in that strong affirmation that she has become “more than my mother’s daughter”. She revisits the love she shared with Seth, her first boyfriend; or, she now wonders, was it just the sex? She recalls in relentless detail the tsunami of orgasms triggered by a vibrator, the only present Seth ever gave her. Another memory takes her to Rome and Florence with her mother, where she is overwhelmed by paintings and sculptures, all created by men, depicting the sufferings – all inflicted by men - of virgin saints, climaxing in ecstasy fused with agony. Eros and Thanatos, her mother points out,


in California, Nina is carrying out community punishment


sex and death. Back home service, a redemptive


for her treatment of


one of her classmates; her action – involving a photograph posted on social media - was so repulsively cruel that she seems unable to tell us what she did until her tale is almost done. She enjoys the work she is required to do with homeless dogs in an animal shelter


far less affluent than her own. The reward for


unconditional powerful segment


sited in a neighbourhood the


love


some of these dogs have given is to be killed and rendered down for use in manufacturing lipstick. In another particularly


of


her story, she records her moment by moment experience of abortion – kept secret from her parents and boyfriend. In fact, Nina shares very few conversations of any depth with males; from her perspective, those


who impinge at all upon her life – Seth, her mostly absent father, her English teacher – remain unknowable. Interspersed with these narratives, set in a different short pieces


typeface, of creative writing


which contribute to a project for her Advanced Placement English class. They are unified in one way by Nina’s attempts to employ magic realism; and in another through their oblique insights into the experiences she describes in other chapters. All this makes for a fragmented chronology which expects intelligent, reflective readers. They will find that the interplay of the story’s diverse elements offers a powerful account of Nina’s uneven, restless growth through two years of mid-adolescence. GF


Across the Divide HHHHH


Anne Booth, Catnip Books, 305pp., 9781910611111, £6.99, pbk


It is very refreshing to read a novel for teenagers that deals with things of the mind, moral attitudes to issues and how it affects them. This is such a story. Olivia’s mum is a ‘peace activist’ and when she ends up being arrested, Olivia goes to stay with her Dad on Lindisfarne. Her parents did not marry, not in fact her father’s choice, as Olivia finds out on this holiday. Combined with this, things at school where there has been a move to start a cadet force, have set her on a collision course with not only her mother’s beliefs but those of Aidan, a boy with whom she has grown up. She has moved out to live with her paternal grandparents, one of whom is a vicar but also in the army reserve and has served in Afghanistan and who signs her consent form to join the cadet force. On the island Olivia encounters an old fashioned boy with whom she strikes up a friendship, but he is from the time of the Great War. The story tells of Olivia’s coming to terms with her mother’s inability to see any point of view but he own, Aidan’s Quaker


beliefs, and the behaviour


of some of her fellow students, and ultimately her decision to arbitrate a decision about the cadet force. This is a thoughtful, well-argued story


of a girl trying to work out things in her own mind, finding out how to be her own person instead of being part of the pack. Olivia finds out that some people see things only in their own terms without even trying to understand someone else’s point of view. Her interaction with William dealing with his own issues illustrates Olivia’s experience completely, linking it with a past much in the public mind at this the centenary year of the ending of the Great War. This is a very good novel indeed and hopefully will encourage other young people to think hard about the issues that impinge on their lives. JF


The Island HHHH


M.A. Bennett, Hot Key Books, 366pp, 978 1 4714 0753 6, £7.99 pbk


This very modern take on Lord of The Flies deals in extremes. Lincoln (Link)


Selkirk is the son of two behavioural science


academics are whose new


research posts at Oxford University necessitated a move from the West Coast of America and the bonus of a free place for Link at Osney, a prestigious public school whose most


were in sport. Prior to this, Link had been


effectively-


impressive achievements very happily-and


home schooled, with not a whisper of organised sport anywhere on the deeply academic curriculum. The twin events of his arrival at


Osney and his utter failure in the athletic initiation ceremony made him the natural target for the energetic, imaginative and cruelly devised bullying which he endured for three years before declaring to his parents his intention to


leave school before his GCSE


examinations. His parents capitulated only after Link agreed to stay on to complete his exams and to attend a Preparation For Life Summer School to which his parents had signed him up. Link agrees to the terms, boards


the plane with his fellow students and then finds himself waking up amidst


its wreckage, apparently


alone on a desert island. After his initial rejoicing he is deflated by their reappearance on ‘his’ island, but his wealth of knowledge and its practical application mean that


the others


defer to him as he delivers the three things necessary for survival: fire, food and shelter. The realisation of his power turns


him into the sort of bully he despised at Osney School. The reader begins to loathe him just as much as the bullies who made his life so miserable for so long. He resorts to punishments like starvation, humiliation and isolation, playing his role


like the worst of


dictators and always laying bare his reasoning so that the reader can watch the loss of his moral compass. His attachment to Flora-unusual in a young man so solitary-makes him realise how far down the path of dictator he has gone. The revelations at the end of the


book were a shock and, in retrospect, make the reader realise how cleverly the narrative has been constructed. The plane crash was a fake, the island a social science experiment in conjunction with Nasa and the students selected for their conformity to certain stereotypes. The ultimate aim was to explore how human beings in a new and isolated environment would establish themselves as a society, ready for the eventual colonisation of Mars but the sideline was that Link discovered how to lead using his many hitherto undervalued talents and realised, too, that people can act in ways which are totally surprising. This a multi-layered, thought-


provoking book with a good deal to say about the world in which we find ourselves and it is because of this that I found myself a little let down by the inevitability-and


clumsiness- of the


ending. Link as the President of America was never beyond belief but that - and his marriage to Fiona - might have been more powerful left unsaid. VR


Books for Keeps No.232 September 2018 31


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