reviews Ed’s Choice This is Not a Love Story HHHHH


Keren David, Atom, 352pp, 978034001401, £6.99 pbk


What is it about Amsterdam that inspires authors? First we


Postcards from No Man’s Land (Chambers); now Keren David visits that city in her latest novel This is Not a Love Story. Carnegie winner, Postcards in No Man’s Land, was notable for introducing difficult questions around sexuality, identity and family relationships. These themes are also central to Keren David’s novel – albeit handled with a lighter more contemporary touch.


had


The sudden death of her beloved father finds Kitty in Amsterdam, dragged there by her mother looking to make a new start. Theo is also in Amsterdam in disgrace. Then there is Ethan - beautiful, enigmatic, troubled. It is a potent mix.


The story is told through the words and thoughts of the two


characters as the reader sees incidents from the point of view of both Kitty and Theo. This has the advantage of immediacy – as does the use of the present tense narration - though it also makes it more difficult to establish clear differences in characterisation. However,


technique with assurance, drawing the reader into the world of her teenage


the background to each gradually through their thoughts or through dialogue rather than extended description. Central to the story is Ethan. He is the catalyst and focus of emotions and tensions. This is a difficult role and Ethan is perhaps, as a result, less successful as a character than Theo


and Kitty.


old, are in love and the book begins with descriptions of their first sexual intercourse. It’s explicit and honest, a true depiction of intimacy. In contrast to the brutal sexism casually expressed by their school mates, the act is joyful as well as tender. The novel’s other pivotal character Liv, Rose’s best friend, is much more sexually experienced – in school parlance she’s a ‘slag’ – and, to her own shame, is jealous when Rose finally tells her what is happening.


‘I never thought I could be just myself with anyone’ says Rose as she and Michael lie together in her bed, a particularly telling statement. Rose’s mother is loving but distant, and her daughter learned early


emotions. Michael’s home life too is complicated and, despite


apearances, unhappy. His father sets strict rules and has high expectations for his sons, determined not to inflict on his own family the chaos and misery he endured as a child growing up with an alcoholic father. When Rose realises she is pregnant, the first thought of both of them is how to hide this from their respective parents. Despite the


to hide her outward


protagonists, revealing David handles this main


However, he has sufficient presence to convince the reader, while the liveliness of the writing carries the action on. Then there is Amsterdam, the


background but very much part of the story, the canals, the buildings, the life, all adding colour and depth; this is a real place and there is a sense that this story could only happen in this city. Another strand, adding a very personal touch, is the Jewish background shared by the characters and subtly influencing their views and reactions to events.


Is this a love story? In some ways it is. A love story in which Amsterdam itself plays a part. It is also about teenage relationships and sexual identity. It uses many of the conventions and drivers of the teenage romance, but David has the courage to bring her narrative to a much more open ended conclusion. This an enjoyable read that offers some surprises to the reader without subverting the genre uncomfortably. Recommended.


FH


evidence of the pregnancy test – bought by Liv – Rose goes into denial, convincing herself that there is no baby. Michael, almost paralysed with shock, chooses to go along with this. Months pass, and the strain of denial and secrecy takes an awful toll on both young people, but Rose in particular.


Touchell describes the consequences of Rose and Michael’s union in harrowing detail, and gives events an almost tragic inevitability. Viewpoint switches between the characters, adding layers of insight and understanding. It’s a heart-breaking story, told with power and compassion.


AR House of Windows HH


Alexia Casale, Faber, 363pp, 978 0 571 32154 4, £6.99 pbk


This is a very odd novel. Set in the ancient university town of Cambridge, it contains many loving and detailed descriptions of favourite


and colleges which while pleasantly nostalgic for those who know the place will mean little to those


do not. And the university itself and who streets city itself. It is not mere


the occupants of its various colleges are nothing like the real thing. The author admits in an epilogue that ‘the Cambridge in these pages belongs to the World of the Book, not the real world’. But why create an imaginary place set in modern times but largely made up outdated stereotypes? Who cares any more


rooms should always be referred to as ‘setts’ and non-university folk as ‘townies’? There is also an over-the top eccentric Professor straight from central casting and an undergraduate boating crew of staggering stupidity. Conversation throughout is very stilted and the occasional jokes that various characters enjoy so much are never in the least funny for anyone else.


There is the germ of a good story here. The main character Nick, starting his studies aged fifteen because he is so clever at maths, goes through an authentically horrible time, unable to mix with other students often because he


sessions. He also finds himself held back socially because of his short size and prickly personality. He has an excuse for this, with memories of an insane, now dead mother to cope with plus the occasional disruptive presence of his emotionally illiterate father. Nick’s descent into loneliness and depression rings all too true, and his final survival is properly heartening. But this is brought about by other characters who simply don’t convince, talking in clichés and seldom at a loss for some quick sermonising. We never learn what Nick’s father actually looks like and his godfather Bill, a much nicer character, only seems to have a life when he makes one of his usually abortive visits. As for the women, there is young Ange who spends a lot of time bouncing and fellow-student Susie, who habitually tells it as it is whatever the circumstances.


It is good to come across a Young Adult novel so different from the current norms. A pity, therefore, that this one is not better written, suffering from repetition and a growing looseness of style. But Nerdy Nick still comes over as a real character, and readers will probably stick with him to the end, so real are his problems and so slow their partial solution.


NT All My Secrets HHHH


Sophie McKenzie, Simon and Schuster, 295pp, 978 1 47112 221 7. £7.99 pbk


Evie Brown’s life is turned upside down when a solicitor unexpectedly visits her home to inform her that she is to be the recipient of a £10 million inheritance from the mother she did not know she had. Her sense of betrayal is overwhelming: she cannot understand why her father has allowed her to live a lie. Unable to understand that he made the decision to lie in order to protect her and give her a stable and loving home life, she turns to the internet to learn more about her mother, idealising her in the process.


When she discovers that she has an uncle Gavin, she determines to run away from home and go and find


cannot join them in drinking whether college


him in order to learn more about her mother and escape what she feels is an intolerable situation at home. Her desperate need to make sense of the upheaval she has just experienced and her refusal to enter into any sort of dialogue with her parents make her extremely vulnerable and over- trusting of those who claim they will protect her. Therefore, when her uncle recommends to her parents that Evie might benefit from a month’s stay in a specialist facility for troubled teenagers on the remote and forbidding island of Lightsea – which, he claims, is run by a man who knew her mother in his youth – she is keen to take up the suggestion.


The reader is repeatedly reminded of Evie’s vulnerable state – and of the £10 million inheritance, which predictably attracts unscrupulous characters. When Evie is drawn first to one, then another of the boys on the island, McKenzie manipulates the reader’s response – and we are invited to consider staff in the same way. Our belief about who is to be trusted wavers and changes, just as Evie’s does.


The narrative provides a mixture of mystery,


romance – and the obligatory heart- warming ending.It addresses some of the classic problems which teenagers face – trust, alienation, confusion about identity – and presents them in a package likely to appeal to those who like their reading to be cinematic and larger than life. VR


Me and Earl and the Dying Girl HHH


Jesse Andrews, Allen & Unwin, 304pp, 9781 7602 90450. £7.99 pbk


Greg is a self-confident boy of seventeen who doesn’t believe he is self-confident. He tries to get through life by neither be-friending anyone nor annoying them. His only friend is Earl, a tough kid from the wrong side of the tracks. What they love is making films, very bad films.


His mother makes him spend time with Rachel who he knows from Hebrew School and who is now ill with cancer. Gradually spending time with her Greg begins to be absorbed into school society, and he isn’t happy. By the end Rachel and Earl make him see that his life is okay, that he has no real reason to feel like an outsider and in fact he is very self absorbed and unaware of what is going on around him.


From the very start the narrator tells you that if you are expecting a heartwarming romance and teenage coming of age story you will be disappointed.


It is amusing and there are some very funny lines but ‘alien barf’ jokes probably work better on teenagers than on me. It is written in a variety of styles, including film script form, which stayed just this side of irritating. Then again my sympathies lay with the teacher who had to deal with a student quoting Klaus Kinski dialogue in German.


Sometimes I felt the author tried too hard to have zany and eccentric characters, though they were believable all the same. It did wear thin at times but overall an amusing and moving book.


CD Books for Keeps No.213 July 2015 31 fast-paced action and


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