search.noResults

search.searching

saml.title
dataCollection.invalidEmail
note.createNoteMessage

search.noResults

search.searching

orderForm.title

orderForm.productCode
orderForm.description
orderForm.quantity
orderForm.itemPrice
orderForm.price
orderForm.totalPrice
orderForm.deliveryDetails.billingAddress
orderForm.deliveryDetails.deliveryAddress
orderForm.noItems
reviews 14+Secondary/Adult continued


her debut novel, award-winning The Art of Being Normal – is so impressive. For this novel to reflect the nuanced tensions within a family and a network of friends, we need to experience others through narrator Mia’s eyes and yet also to understand those characters’ perspectives on her. How trustworthy is Mia’s account of sisters, parents, teachers, friends?


aware or self-deceiving? She swings from exhilaration to drunken despair, trading on her easy sexuality, thinking she’s got things under control though we can see she’s being exploited by some free-range night-clubbing blokes twice her age or even a local lad she knows her close friend Kimmie has long fancied from afar. She leaves a trail of emotional wreckage, even trampling through her parents’ sentimental wedding reception. Above all, she fails to see beneath the apparent serenity of her sisters’ lives. Mia is at the end of her first year


of A-levels, and not doing well; if she is to make anything of her own future, something needs to happen soon. It does, from an unexpected quarter. Her attention has been absorbed by I-Am-To-Be-A-Mother Grace; meanwhile, Audrey’s been ploughing up and down the lonely training pool and wondering just who she is – take away the swimming, who’s left? The ending brings the sisters intimately together, maybe in a situation which comes close to needless melodrama. In these closing chapters, Mia looks beyond herself to understand


uncertainties of her siblings and friends. I have to say, though, I did wish those parents would grow up a bit. GF


The Edge of Everything HHH


Jeff Giles, Bloomsbury, 359pp, 978-1-4088-6907-9, £7.99 pbk


When Zoe has to go out in a snowstorm to find her brother Jonah and their two dogs, she not only finds them but also a character called ‘Stan the Man’, who admits to killing their elderly neighbours Bert and Betty, but says that he also knew their father, who had died in a caving accident the previous year. He then tries to attack Zoe and her brother. So far this sounds like a crime thriller but then something weird happens; the lake starts


the Self-


on humanity. They are garbage and we are dustmen’, which is a chilling concept. This would appear to the first of at least two books in the sequence, so it will be fascinating to see how the plot works out. Will X find out his background and will Zoe come to terms with the truth about her father; both questions that have been left hanging in the balance. This is worth the effort of reading and will no doubt gain many fans. MP


The Pomegranate Tree HHHHH


Vanessa Altin, ill Faye Moorhouse, Blanket Press, 198pp, 9781910884058, £12.99 hbk


This is a powerful and extremely vivid story about the plight of the Syrian Kurds. Seen through the eyes of 13 year-old Dilly we follow her journey from living in a warm and loving family group with seven brothers and sisters to becoming a refugee as the ‘black plague’ of ‘ratmen’ as Dilly calls the ISIS fighters sweep across Sryria leaving devastation in their wake. The author was inspired to write the book after witnessing the huge numbers of


borders and hearing their stories The story opens with a shocking


refugees on the Turkish/Syrian


scene – Dilly thinks she has just witnessed her toddler sister’s Hira’s beheading. Her father and five brothers are away fighting in the Kurdish army and her mother and Dilly’s other sister Elif were last seen being taken away in a truck. One of the villagers, Rehana, one of a band of female warriors looks after Dilly and promises to help her find her family. They are all


suggests that Dilly writes about what is happening in a diary and sitting under a pomegranate tree - the sweetness of the fruit reminding Dilly of her family and the bitterness the arrival of the ratmen - she begins to write. Through the pages of Dilly’s diary we see her hopes and fears tempered with courage and determination and a fierce longing to re-unite her family. Interspersed between the horrors


man appears and saves them from their attacker. He has no name but Zoe decides to call him ‘X’. We now find ourselves in two parallel worlds, or rather this world and the Lowlands (otherwise known as Hell) and X is a bounty hunter who is charged with taking wicked souls punishment.


to glow and a strange


has Zoe trying to come to terms with her father’s death as well as developing an attraction for X. This is an original and quite weird


story which takes some time to get in to.


about family there are also moral and philosophical thoughts


has the right to punish the wrongdoer. One of the characters says ‘these souls we take have given up all claims


Whilst it has strong themes about who


The story that follows to face


of flight and survival we catch glimpse of her life before the crisis living in rural village community with a pack of loyal dogs whom are very much part of the family. When Dilly and her mother and sisters have to leave the dogs behind when they are forced to flee their village they are heartbroken. Some US soldiers tell Dilly they know her father and brothers are alive but in prison and tell her about their bravery in battle.


Rehana takes Dilly to safety across a minefield over the border into Turkey and Dilly hears more good news that her little sisters have been spotted walking in the direction of their home. But they are walking straight


danger so Dilly hatchers a daring plan to bring them to safety. The rescue is terrifying and extraordinarily brave but by the end of the story Dilly has her family almost all back. The tale is beautifully written in a


direct and striking way and is very moving; you get a real sense of how


into After an airstrike in this together. She


ordinary people’s lives are affected. The horrors


yet the solidarity and strength of the family bonds of the Kurdish people and their warmth and courage shine through. This is an important book and should be in every secondary school library. JC


The White Hare HHH


Michael Fishwick, Zephyr, 232pp, 978 1 786 690517, £10.99 hbk


When Robbie’s Father remarries, after the death of his wife and moves back to the West Country village where he was born to start on a renovation project, Robbie becomes embroiled in the local mythology surrounding sightings of a white hare, the harbinger of turmoil and destruction. He is strangely


mysterious Mags, who tells him of a local tragedy connected to the two sons of the village grandees, little knowing how he will play a part in an impending death himself. What starts out as a promising tale


of how ancient folklore is steeped in everyday life in a small community, ultimately fails to deliver on the overall story. SE


Whisper to Me HHHHH


Nick Lake, Bloomsbury, 531pp, 9781408853863, £7.99 pbk


Set in New Jersey, this sometimes harrowing story provides


sympathetic and informed description of what it is like to hear voices in your head inaudible to everyone else. But its narrator, 17-year-old Cassie, also has to cope with a possessive and permanently angry father, a first love of whom he strongly


and the disappearance and possible murder of a new best friend. What follows is artfully


involving, though Cassie’s advice to herself to ease up occasionally on her habitual mental self-flagellation could well have been taken more often. Socially isolated and driven to endless reading, Cassie


some of the darker elements in the Greek myths she loves in her own story. She struggles to stay sane while her voices keep telling her she is a worthless guilty party in the tragedy of her mother’s violent death some years before. Thankfully she


receives psychiatric support when it most needed - would she have been as well-served in this country? But while one doctor merely prescribes pills, the second helps her understand and then, as much as she can, take on and stand up to what her voices are saying. The same situation was unforgettably described in Joanne


semi-autobiographical novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, published in 1964 but still in print. Nick Lake is also a good writer. While this long book could have been cut in places it often contains pages consisting of just one or two words as Cassie debates briefly with herself in her characteristically self-deprecating way. Her despair is balanced by a remarkably understanding


forgiving boyfriend who stays by her when others may have had enough.


and Greenberg’s soon recognises constructed and disapproves a drawn to the are not sugar-coated


But they would have been wrong; Cassie is a clever and original person, worth sticking with. Her author serves her well; like her, he too has much to offer both here and in his previous three novels. NT


Heartless HHH


Marissa Meyer, Macmillan, 9781509814138, 449pp, £7.99 pbk


Cath, Lady Catherine may belong to the aristocratic class in Wonderland, but her dream is to set up as the best baker in the land with her companion, Mary Ann. The problem - becoming a baker is not suitable and in addition the King of Hearts wishes to marry her; to make her Queen of Hearts. Then Jest arrives - Cath falls in love. But


endings are not guaranteed Marissa Meyer


fairytales. Here she takes on Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking dense,


she reimagines


in neat references to the originals and leading up to a dramatic - and appropriate conclusion; the title of the novel is Heartless after all. This is not an easy read and would be most appreciated by young readers (or adults) already familiar with Carroll and so able to relish the intertextuality and the recreation of this world. What is lacking is Carroll’s anarchic but logical nonsense. FH


Goodbye Days HHHH


Jeff Zentner, Andersen Press, 416pp, 978-1-7834-4551-6, £7.99 pbk


Carver Briggs is an American youth of seventeen. He has three friends, Eli Bauer, Thurgood Edwards known as Mars and Blake Lloyd. His three friends are to pick Carver up at the library where he works. But they are late. Carver sends a text to find out where his friends are. The three die in a fatal car crash. The police find a half composed message on Mars’s phone. Was he texting Carver as he drove the car? Was Carver at fault for texting him when he knew Mars would be at the wheel of his car? The rest of Zentner’s novel deals


read


Glass. The result is a detailed


abounding


herself with the Lunar Chronicles where


even in Wonderland has


happy


established iconic


with the aftermath of tragedy. Carver must learn to cope with his grief and maintain his life. Members of the three bereaved families can help or hinder this process. Some help comes in unexpected and dramatic form. The book delivers for the reader with searing honesty in respect of loss, grief and guilt. The detail of the process after the accident is utterly realistic. Many novels for young readers have


a lethal motor crash as their narrative climax, leaving the reader to wonder how survivors might cope. Zentner takes the crash as his starting point, an unusual approach. There is however


flaw in the credibility of the book. Carver has some sessions with a psychotherapist, Dr Mendez. The therapist


his own feelings, which professional counsellors very rarely do, striking an unconvincing note. RB


Books for Keeps No.223 March 2017 31 talks one serious very openly about


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32