reviews Liberty’s Fire HHHHH


Lydia Syson, Hot Key, 368pp, 978-1-47140-367-5, £7.99 pbk


The Franco-Prussian War has left France, and Paris, exhausted, demoralised; another revolution is in the air. When events come to a head Zéphyrine, Anatole, Jules and Marie are faced with difficult decisions and dilemmas; decisions that will profoundly affect their lives and relationships.


This is Lydia Syson’s third novel. All are historical, none are placed in an obvious or popular period. Here it is a few weeks after the Franco-Prussian War, not a time that many young people (or indeed adults) will know much about though there is a sad and uncanny resemblance to events that are often in the news today.


But this is not a dry history lesson, it is a dramatic story filled with tragedy and heroism. Syson’s protagonists are very real, not least in their fallibilities. Jules and Antoine, Zéphyrine and Marie are young people we recognise and understand – even when their actions may be less than heroic, for history is never black or white. The Parisian setting is vivid and immediate. The reader is there on the barricades cheering for the Commune. While the Tudors and Victorians may hold a continuing fascination, it is novels like this that open the eyes and imagination to a wider history. Highly recommended.


FH Nobody Saw No One HHHH


Steve Tasane, Walker Books, 310pp, 978-1-40635-076-0, £6.99, pbk


Nobody Saw No One is a modern-day retelling of Oliver Twist, mainly set in the gritty surroundings of North London’s Seven Sisters Road. Byron, aka Citizen Digit, escaped to London from his secure care home, the inappropriately named Tenderness House, and is now ‘liberating goods’ for a man they call Virus, in return for food and shelter. On one of Digit’s shoplifting expeditions, he sees Alfi Spar, a fellow Tenderness House runaway who’s now living on the streets. Digit has always felt very protective towards the infuriatingly naïve, honest Alfi, and scoops him up and brings him home to Virus. We soon find out why they escaped: Tenderness House, led by the odious governor ‘Call-Me Norman’ is a centre of paedophile activity.


Alfi’s not cut out for a life of crime with Virus. (Given how cherubic and well-behaved Alfi is, I kept wondering why he hadn’t been adopted years ago, and why his previous foster parents were so quick to believe he’d stolen from them.) It’s not long before he’s caught by the police and placed with foster parents. But there’s no chance he can stay in this happy home: Virus and the money-obsessed Jackson Banks both need him for their own purposes, and it seems not even Digit can protect him. Blood, bodies, kidnapping, car chases, explosions


and grim revelations follow before this action-packed book reaches a pleasing conclusion.


In Steve Tasane’s impressive debut, Blood Donors, the protagonist tells the story in a very convincing street voice. This time Digit and Alfi tell the story alternately, and their voices too are always convincing and distinctive. Digit’s narrative is littered with made-up but easy-to-understand words, like ‘diminimising’ and ‘snarkastically’, and his descriptions are particularly evocative: of the governor he says, ‘Pubey brown hairs were sticking out of his ears and chin and cheeks, and protruding like spiders’ legs out of both nostrils’; a fellow thief is ‘more irritating than an eyeful of Vindaloo’; and Alfi ‘would be terrified of his own bad breath’.


It’s a gripping, fast-paced, satisfying and highly topical read, with some great characters – especially Digit, who becomes more and more appealing as his own background is revealed. I look forward to reading more from this author.


RW


Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary


HHHHH


David & Ben Crystal, Oxford University Press, 352pp, 978-0-19273-750-2, £12.99 pbk


My immediate response when I picked up this book was that I wished I had been able to use it when I was studying Shakespeare’s plays in secondary school. It is not only scholarly and comprehensive, it is hugely enjoyable whether you are browsing or seeking to increase your knowledge about something specific. The Dictionary explains words taken from what the authors, and probably most of us, would consider to be Shakespeare’s most well liked and studied plays. These are: Hamlet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest and Twelfth Night. It is an excellent resource for anyone aged about 10 or 11 upwards who wants to know more about Shakespeare’s language. Even readers at the younger end of the age range will be fascinated by the definitions of unusual words – for example ‘lass-lorn’ (forsaken by a sweetheart), ‘belly pinched’ (starving) and ‘zir’ (a dialect word meaning sir). Together, these authors make an impressive team: Professor David Crystal is a leading figure in English language studies and Ben Crystal is an actor as well as a writer and able to bring to the book his knowledge of Shakespeare’s time and the performance of


the plays.


The design of the Dictionary’s pages makes them clear and inviting: the headwords stand out and print colour and style is varied according to the status of the information. Three helpful symbols pepper the book: a ‘warning note’


flagging that


Shakespeare’s use of a word differs from modern usage; a ‘usage note’ explaining in more detail the contexts


The entire Books for Keeps archive is available to read online


www.booksforkeeps.co.uk Books for Keeps No.212 May 2015 31


in which Shakespeare used the word; and a ‘theatre note’ which will be invaluable to those putting on one of the plays. Language panels highlight things of special interest, for example words to do with stage directions, use of exclamations and family names; interestingly names for members of the family – brother, mother and so on – have changed little. Kate Bellamy’s illustrations of such things as clothes, music, recreations and armour – many of which are in a picture section in the middle of the book – are full of visual information and colour. They add to our sense of the atmosphere of Shakespeare’s times and contribute considerably to the pleasure the book affords the reader.


MM The Alex Crow HHHHH


Andrew Smith, Electric Monkey, 368pp, 978-1-40527-342-8, £7.99 pbk


Andrew Smith’s novel Grasshopper Jungle, a wildly original sci-fi adventure about sexually-confused teen boys fighting a plague of giant killer bugs, was one of my favourite books of last year. It was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal though sadly didn’t make the shortlist.


Adolescent boys are also at the centre of The Alex Crow, which is equally wild, weird and profound. The central character is fifteen-year-old Ariel, whose story begins as he escapes death in his unnamed country’s civil war, by hiding in a refrigerator. He describes his journey from refrigerator to the US, via a wretched refugee camp where he is abused by fellow inmates, to his adopted American brother Max, apologising all the while for burdening him with such dark life stories. The two become friends and allies at the more than slightly sinister Camp Merrie-Seymour for boys, a place teens are sent to detox from technology. The Camp is owned by the company that employs Max and Ariel’s father as a genetic scientist, and his Alex division are involved in very strange activities indeed, including bringing extinct creatures back to life. Ariel suspects that he and Max too might be subjects of the division’s experiments.


Other stories run in parallel: one involves the survivors of a nineteenth century expedition to the Arctic where, we discover, the de-extinction programme began; another describes


a truly bizarre road-trip taken by Lenny, aka the ‘melting man’. Lenny is an early creation of Max’s dad, a bio-drone now quite literally falling apart, and hallucinating wildly: Joseph Stalin is a constant presence urging him to commit crimes. All the stories combine as the book reaches its conclusion.


Technology is changing our world in ways we could never have predicted but, Smith seems to say, human nature remains obsessed with violence and, despite our all-encompassing desire to reproduce, mankind is careering recklessly towards extinction. Original, entertaining and thought provoking, this is one of the best YA novels you will read this year.


MMa It’s About Love HHH


Steven Camden, HarperCollins, 448pp, 978-0-00751-124-2, £7.99 pbk


There were high hopes for this story, from the author of the previous excellent Tape. This current novel is also cleverly crafted, written partly as if it is a film script produced by troubled sixteen-year-old Luke. But has there ever been such a determinedly self-defeating young hero in a teenage novel? Luke hates himself and most other people. Given the chance every now and then to improve his life he generally goes the other way. It is a near miracle that beautiful and lively Leia, a fellow pupil on their shared film course, manages not only to put up with him but also offer much-needed love and ability. But even after finding the perfect girl-friend Luke’s problems still get worse, now having to deal with a charismatic older brother released from prison and still in danger from a previous enemy. With more upsets to come, this story would certainly win any award for the glummest novel of the year. There is much in it that is also good and original, such as the skilful weaving in of references to old films and the exciting moment when the young couple’s screen story seems to be coming together. But Luke, already socially crippled by a long facial scar, is always too wearingly close to personal disaster. Dark, depressing and finally melodramatic, this story might well appeal to young readers should they be feeling the same way. Others may prefer something less gloomy.


NT


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