reviews


career at her last school, Grace is appointed deputy editor of the Post. To Henry’s surprise, she indicates that she will help with the paper but has no intention of writing for it. The novel now poses two questions: who is Grace Town and why does she refuse to employ the talent she supposedly has in abundance? The strength of this book lies in


the depiction of its two protagonists. Henry and Grace are utterly believable three-dimensional characters whose conversations are


wonderfully funny. It comes as no surprise that there


is talk of filming Sutherland’s book. But having said that, as the true sensational story of Grace’s personal history emerges, so the


loses its grip on reality. Not


does the reader ask could this have happened, but also if it had happened how could it all be kept secret? High schools are usually pretty good at ferreting out secrets. In the end we learn that Grace


walked with a cane because she had an accident that left her impaired. Her impairment is cured, in much the same wonderful way as impairments were cured in sentimental nineteenth century fiction. She no longer needs the cane. If the film is made, there is work to be done by the scriptwriters. RB


Orangeboy HHHH


Patrice Lawrence, Hodder Children’s Books, 432pp, 9781444927207, £7.99 pbk


This explosive novel set around vicious London boy gangs peddling drugs is not


Sixteen-year-old Marlon, its narrator, starts as an innocent caught up in an ongoing legacy of escalating violence handed down over time by older family members. Early on he has enough evidence to go the police who might have got at least some of all this settled. Instead he chooses to sort things out for himself, a decision that leaves him, his home and his long-suffering mother prey to more violence. From Enid Blyton onwards telling the police early on about suspicions is not a popular thing to do in fiction, with young sleuths anxious not to spoil the fun they hope to be having themselves following up clues or apprehending villains. But gangland London is no fun place to be, and the author while sympathetic to Marlon’s inadequacies does get the message across that he is signally neither cool nor clever enough to be acting on his own like this. It takes Marlon a long time to realise this himself, perhaps a little too long. The beatings-up he keeps receiving meanwhile get nastier and nastier and the patience extended towards his general obduracy at home and by his contemporary companion Tish living opposite become increasingly


for the faint-hearted.


narrative only


hard to believe. This girl and lifelong friend remains the voice of tough common sense usually


Marlon see the error of his ways. He does survive, but it is a close call and some of the violence he experiences is little less than sickening. But readers with strong stomachs can expect to be entirely hooked into a story that is well written, pacey and within its own terms horribly convincing. NT


No Virgin HHHHH


Anne Cassidy, Hot Key Books, 183pp, 978-1-4714-0578-5, £7.99 pbk


This is an important work of fiction for all young women to read. Stacey Woods was raped when she was 17. After the event, like so many others before her, she was too ashamed to confide in either family or friends and, like so many other women, she blamed herself. This timely offering from Anne


to see that they are just that – not perpetrators or collaborators, but victims. More than this, it provides practical help with how to deal with the very difficult issues surrounding such an assault. Stacey lives with her mother, her


Cassidy helps victims without


throughout, success


to make trying sometimes On the strength


14+Secondary/Adult continued of


her writing


Here Cassidy clearly demonstrates how clever groomers are – listening carefully, picking up important clues, feigning interest – even attraction – to get their way. When Harry starts to


sexual interest in Stacey she is flattered, attracted, eager, but after an afternoon of a little too much drink at his brother Marty’s flat he rapes her, with the usual reasoning that it was all just a bit of fun, she had led his brother on and no-one had been hurt. Marty even compounds her humiliation by giving her money. When Stacey tracks down an ex- girlfriend of Harry’s and finds that the same thing happened to her she confides in Patrice and they go together to a Rape Crisis Centre to ensure that justice is done. In No Virgin Anne Cassidy has


written a novel which will echo the experiences of far too many innocent and vulnerable


addition, she has given them a strong message about the tricks of grooming and the knowledge that there somewhere


position can go where they will be listened to without criticism, believed and helped. VR


Girl Detached HHHHH


Manuela Salvi, trans. Denise Muir, The Bucket List, 280pp, 978 1 911370 02 4, £7.99 pbk


Girl Detached exposes a hidden world of grooming, sexual exploitation, predatory adult males, and the sale of young virgins in a graphic context where, for example, fellatio and anal sex are explicitly present. Manuela Salvi has published over 20 books for children and young adults, but this novel has been banned in her native Italy. It now appears in a translation by the experienced Denise Muir with The Bucket List, who plan to publish ‘bold and truthful writing for children and young people’. In her post-text notes, Salvi writes of her experience of


sister Jodie and Jodie’s baby Tyler. Relations between Stacey and her sister are strained, not helped by her mother’s indulgences with Jodie and her acceptance of Jodie’s failure to take responsibility for Tyler. Her best friend Patrice, always widely popular, is loyal to her but cannot understand why she won’t confide what is clearly troubling her and when Stacey won’t speak she temporarily seeks out the company of a less complicated friend. Harry homes in on Stacey in a café,


noticing her fashion sketches and begins to groom her for his brother, promising to


fashion buyer, sympathising with her fraught family relationships, offering the use of his brother’s empty flat.


introduce her to a


homophobia and anti-feminism’ in Italy; and her renewed determination to make her voice heard. She is currently working on her PhD (I think on forms of censorship in children’s and young adult fiction), funded by the Jacqueline Wilson scholarship at Roehampton University. Sixteen year old Aleksandra has had a guarded childhood. Her youthful mother handed her over as a baby to her grandmother and, as far as Alek ever knew, took no interest in her. Her protective Gran restricted her


hasn’t helped her social confidence either. She loses that impediment – as many do – when she steps onto a stage armed with her character’s words; it is within her local theatre group that she finds both fluency and acceptance. When her Gran dies, she has no option but to live with a mother she barely knows – she is still angry with her. Life in her new home is awkward, so she’s glad to find a friend next door in Megan, constantly at war


horizons; and her stammer ‘inequality, discrimination, women in Stacey’s is young women. In show a


with her own mother. Megan has calculating plans for Alek, introducing her to a whirl of shopping, alcohol, drugs and parties, where girls (mostly Alek’s age or younger) readily strip off to dance on table tops before leering, older men. In return for the banknotes stuffed into their bras and thongs – to Alek’s innocent confusion – the girls are led off to side rooms or dark corners, where they are soon at work, their heads between their clients’ thighs. Alek joins the dancers, but for her things are different. She is surprised and entranced by the attentions of the courteous Ruben – a smart undergraduate, equipped with car, flat, beach house and hotshot lawyer parents. The plot now races from party to


party, each one luring Alek further into Ruben’s web. We can see she’s being groomed, Alek cannot. Huge sums change hands – customers are hungry


Ruben has a client lined up for Alek. We are in the Land of Savile. Alek’s 11th hour escape depends upon the unconventional support


the theatre carpenter, and Jonah the technician; both want revenge, or at least


those Alek has evaded. There is no soft porn or moral ambiguity here.


concern plausibility. Alek’s absolute gullibility seems at odds with her self- awareness; Salvi must surely have done her research, but how accurate is the account of such parties in such a town – and where is that town anyway? The place is so featureless (‘block after block of identical streets lined with soulless concrete boxes’) that it’s unclear whether we are in Italy or the UK – and to believe in the repellent Ruben and his circle, we need a specific societal context. The theatre set-up has a ramshackle charm, but it bears to


community theatre actually works – at least in contemporary Britain. The group are working on Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance – and they have been in rehearsal for nine months. An eccentric choice of play, you might think, for teenage actors in such a cultural wilderness, but the text does allow Salvi to draw parallels with what’s happening to Alek in the vicious world of those parties. Yet the fortunes of the likeable and vulnerable Alek are compelling – even on a second reading. Readers would probably have enjoyed the come- uppance someone as loathsome as Ruben deserved, but Salvi prefers to lead us away from an impending court case to a happier, more romantic ending. The novel could come to be seen as both


controversial – hence my 5 Star rating; adults with an interest in YA fiction and its readers could well agree with Melvin Burgess (‘Such a brave book!’). Is this a world teenagers know from social media – or even their own town? It’s another of those texts where BfK readers might wish we could listen to them saying what they make of it all. GF


groundbreaking and the way semi-professional little


relation or


My reservations justice, against abusers like of Helena, for young virgins, and


Books for Keeps No.222 January 2017 31


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