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
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