BfK 10 – 14 Middle/Secondary continued


boyfriend, and Minny has to keep an eye out for her big sister Aisling, who has autism and is a target for bullies. When their dad suddenly reappears, with a new partner and a baby on the way, Minny struggles to overcome her intense feelings of resentment, especially when he compounds her sense of betrayal in a painful and particularly personal way.


Too Close to Home HHHHH


Aoife Walsh, Andersen Press, 368pp, 978-1783443000, £7.99 (pbk)


Minny’s life,


people today, is busy and complex. She lives with her mum, sisters and baby brother, and since her dad left five years ago they’ve all been sharing her granny’s house. It’s crowded, and when her granny’s new boyfriend arrives on the scene feels even more so. School offers little peace: Minny’s best friend Penny is also preoccupied with a new


like that of many young The Wolf Wilder HHH


Katherine Rundell, Bloomsbury, 336pp, 978 1 4088 6258 2, £12.99 hbk


Set in remote nineteenth century Russia, this novel opens with thirteen-


If this plot summary makes Too Close to Home sound gloomy or depressing, it’s anything but. Minny is as lively and interesting a central character as you’ll read about and Walsh describes her home and school life with a vivid warmth and sensitivity that bring Hilary McKay’s books to mind – high praise indeed. There’s lots of humour, the kind that derives from character and situation, and real drama too as Minny finally buckles under the pressures inadvertently loaded on her by the different members of her family. Readers will understand Minny’s situation and response to it exactly, and identify fully with her frustrations. This is an excellent addition to the canon of first class family dramas. LS


year-old Feo and her mother living alone far from anywhere or anyone. Their self-appointed job is to re- introduce wolves, who have been kidnapped when young for pets, back into the wild again after their owners have tired of them. The wind howls, there is snow everywhere and then an alarmingly loud bang at the door. Enter General Rakov, a psychopathic bully out to destroy wolves and also the self-contained, spartan way of life endured but also enjoyed by Feo and her mother.


So far, so dynamic. The author, who is a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, writes with authority and has a bold and original imagination. But


New Talent The Baby HHHH


Lisa Drakeford, Chicken House, 256pp, 9781910002230 £7.99 pbk


The party is a great success in Olivia’s opinion- too many people (not


too much alcohol, - even Jonty, her boybriend, is in a good mood. Then she finds her best friend, Nicola, in the bathroom - and she is giving birth to a baby. What happens next?


This is a very assured debut that takes many of the themes and tropes of the contemporary YA novel to create a lively story about teenage relationships. The narrative is delivered by each of the five central characters in turn, the reader sees events from the point of view of not just Olivia and Nicola but also the boys, Jonty and Ben, and finally the little


with the now obligatory present tense, this makes for very direct and immediate storytelling. It also ensures the reader’s sympathies are evenly spread; there are no real villains – or indeed heroes. Instead, familiar teenage tensions and problems are introduced to


sister, Alice. Combined all invited), too loud music,


14+ Secondary/Adult Concentr8


HHHH


William Sutcliffe, Bloomsbury, 247pp, 978 1 4088 66238, £12.99 hbk Set in contemporary London, this novel imagines a time when disruptive pupils are routinely fed a calming drug called Concentr8. Any resemblance between this and Ritalin, today’s actual calming drug of choice, is entirely deliberate. Each chapter starts with extracts from recent authoritative articles or books detailing the alarming rise in prescriptions for Ritalin among the young, particularly in America but also over here.


The


flesh out the background adding a sense of authenticity to the characterisation. The author has the courage to present the reader with an interestingly enigmatic ending, though, in keeping with the conventions of the genre, there are plenty of happy resolutions. While this is not a novel that subverts its genre, it shows the author has a sure touch, confident approach and a lively imagination; definitely a talent to watch.


FH 30 Books for Keeps No.213 July 2015


government, for reasons that are never made clear, decides no longer to support mass dosages of Concentr8 to pupils selected by their head-teachers as prime candidates for chemical calming down. The result is a riot where shops are looted and buildings vandalised. But a gang of five teenagers has other ideas, kidnapping a local government officer and taking him to their urban hide-away. They treat him pitilessly, with Blaze, their leader, particularly heartless. The rest of the novel continues to be told as if by the different characters concerned as things hot up and the young kidnappers find themselves besieged by the police.


Told entirely in the first person, story starts just after the


once Feo is driven out of her home, accompanied by a small band of faithful wolves, her story becomes less convincing. These


become progressively more human in their understanding, at times only lacking speech as they decide what is best for Feo and Ilya, a boy soldier and admirer who has deserted the army for her sake. General Rakov meanwhile, who is out to get all of them, starts popping up here, there


many last-minute escapes from him gradually easing out the sense of pitiless reality with which this story began. The closing pages become almost farcical as a band of grinning children manage to


vicious dictator, something even Enid Blyton’s Famous Five would never have aspired to.


Writing for children has always been allowed a certain latitude when it comes to describing the world as young readers would like it to be rather than as it is. But piling one impossibility on another, with Feo rescuing her mother from an otherwise


before going on to lead a counter- revolution, is not to take readers seriously or indeed the menacing world of Tsarist oppression so well caught in the first few chapters. This author is clearly very talented, but holding a story together that is fairy tale one moment and unsparingly realistic the next ultimately proves too hard a task to bring out successfully.


NT impregnable jail unseat this and everywhere, with too animals


the


the disaffected youths in this story of their miserable


various


accounts


provided by


convincing enough but there are too many of them. These gang members are also so weak and nasty it is hard to feel sorry for them or their sad backgrounds. Sutcliffe tends to be equally unforgiving where other characters are concerned. The London Mayor, more like


than Boris himself, comes over as a buffoon rather than wily politician, and the police


involved in the story are also sold short through their own utterances. With no character inspiring any respect readers’ sympathies could become dangerously stretched. But the whole enterprise is saved by its entirely legitimate


ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) both as a diagnosis and in the way it is currently treated. That is why this is an important as well as an exciting story, despite its occasional excesses. NT


A Small Madness HHHH


Dianne Touchell, Allen and Unwin, 192pp, 978-1760110789, £6.99 (pbk)


Teenage


compelling YA subject matter and there are a number of fine novels on the theme; very few however have the intensity of Dianne Touchell’s book.


Rose and Michael, seventeen years pregnancy is always concern about and Boris Johnson journalists childhoods are


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