reviews 14+ Secondary/Adult Ed’s Choice


The Weight of A Thousand Feathers


HHHHH


Brian Conaghan, Bloomsbury, 978 1408871539, 368p, £12.99 hbk


Bobby Seed will soon be 18. But he is still 17 – and the weight of the world lies on his shoulders. He is the carer for his mother who is in the final stages of MS. His younger brother, Danny also needs to be cared for. But Bobby longs for a normal life where he can enjoy himself, do daft things – and explore his own identity – and do what is right for his mother Brian Conaghan has done it


again. Uncompromising, gritty, laced with a black humour this is a novel that you live. Told by Bobby and almost all dialogue the narrative is direct and immediate. There is an authenticity


that ensures the


reader completely believes in Bobby and what he faces. And at times it seems overwhelming – but truth will certainly be stranger than any fiction and the world of the young carer rarely receives the spotlight. This is a book to make its readers


Mud HHHH


Emily Thomas, Andersen Press, 978-1783446896, 416pp, £7.99 pbk


Emily Thomas has used memories of her unconventional early teenage life to write an exceptionally poignant and very funny novel. Comparisons with I Capture the Castle have already been made – significantly it’s one of her narrator Lydia’s favourite books – and it’s easy to see why: there are real echoes of Dodie Smith’s classic in Mud, particularly in the tone and authenticity of the voice, and in its beautifully perceptive descriptions of a young girl growing up to understand more about herself, her flawed family and the adult world in general. The story is told in diary form, the


first entry being 9th June, 1979. Lydia is 13, her mother died three years earlier, and her father is about to drop a bombshell. Due to a vague reference to ‘money troubles’ later upgraded to a confession that he is ‘completely out of money’, he is selling their house and moving the family to a boat, ‘a lovely old Thames Barge’ to be precise. What’s more, Kate his new girlfriend, will also be moving in with her three children. The boat is big, but also leaky, smelly and uncomfortable.


All


readers will feel the shock and horror Lydia experiences when she is first shown her ‘cabin’. Life on board for its 8 inhabitants – Lydia’s impressively


think. It is not the easy YA read with a suitably


romantic closure; we


leave knowing Bobby and Danny have a difficult future. But the overarching theme – family love, family support – promises that they will survive. An extraordinary book to be recommended to thoughtful, enquiring readers prepared to take a step into the dark. FH


cool and sharp-tongued sister Elsa is off to Cambridge so escapes, mostly – is a tetchy affair. Meanwhile, at her new school, Lydia, self-described as a ‘friend-repeller’ meets Kay. Chip- eating, straight-talking, wonderfully secure in who she is, Kay is the best thing in Lydia’s life and readers will love her too. Friends,


hairstyles,


thriller, is most definitely a liar. She confesses as much in the opening pages of the book which – in her words – is a chronicle of the events that led her to a retreat in the Scottish Highlands to recover


from physical


and mental trauma. It’s an immediate challenge for readers: how much of Nora’s story should they believe? How honest is she really going to be? The story that she tells is certainly enthralling and disturbing. Nora’s description of her interaction with an art teacher at her school opens the book and, a Lolita tale turned upside down, sets the tone, revealing not just her extraordinary ability to deceive others, even her mother, but the frighteningly ruthless way she will deploy it to get what she wants, and particularly to get her revenge for perceived slights. It’s a gift that should be channelled into acting and the opportunity arises when an older girl, Bel – flamboyant, erratic, fascinating – recruits Nora into her production of Cinderella. Bel’s mother, now dead, was a famous actress and her father is a well-known film director. The more Nora sees of Bel’s life, the more she wants it, and when the opportunity arises to play a part in a remake of the film that launched Bel’s mother’s career, Nora sets out to take it from her friend. Nora and Bel might appear to be


opposites – Nora calm and controlled where Bel is wild, spontaneous, self- destructive – but they have much in common. They match one another totally in their desire to get what they want, and in their disregard of others. The inevitable clash is explosive. Holden Caulfield famously describes


adolescent


parties and crushes are all features in Lydia’s diary entries, as they would be for any teenager, but alongside that unfolds the story of her family’s own form of unhappiness. Kate and her


father argue, Kate becoming


increasingly bitter as her father spends more and more time away, his drinking getting out of control. It’s often a story of heart-break, but throughout it all there’s humour too – a scene with Elsa and Lydia at the bar of their local pub a particularly good example. It all makes for an unforgettable read, honest, painful, and full of lines and observations to make you laugh out loud. Like the mud that the Lady Beatrice


sits on, Mud will stick to readers, it’s a book that colours your view of the world as the pages turn. AR


Little Liar HHHH


Julia Gray, Andersen Press, 978- 1783446919, 384pp, £7.99 pbk


Nora Tobias, the central character of Julia Gray’s intense psychological


himself as ‘the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life’; it’s a claim readers will apply to Nora too. Certainly she keeps and holds our attention, if not our trust, from beginning to end. Gray’s control of the plot is assured, as Nora takes us back and forth in time, truths and lies gradually revealed to shock us and change our understanding of what we believe to be true. Little liar, big drama. MMa


Floored: a Collaborative Novel HHHH


Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Tanya Byrne, Non Pratt, Melinda Salisbury, Lisa Williamson and Eleanor Wood, 320pp, 978-1509862306, £7.99


This novel is an exercise in joint authorship. The sections


of wrote the


book are identified by the name of a character in the narrative. The narrative for each character is written by a single author, though which author


which section is undisclosed. It is also undisclosed whether


each other’s sections. Six teenage characters get into a lift


at the headquarters of an organisation which bears more than a passing resemblance to the BBC. In the lift,


authors edited


the six witness a seventh character, Steven Jeffers, suffer a heart attack and die. In each of the succeeding six years these same six people meet to remember the one who died. They also share the vicissitudes of their own lives. Three of the group have stories are


that Kaitlyn particularly has Stargardt a progressive form


memorable. syndrome, visual


of


impairment, is feisty and feminist. Before her story ends she needs an assistance dog.


Joe is badly treated


on account of his being overly trusting and sometimes a trifle naïve, but retains his pleasant personality. His mother has early impact Alzheimer’s, with devastating impact on the family. His story is raw and beautifully written. Sasha lives with her father, her mother having abandoned both of them. Her life is devoted to pleasing her father. She feels a strong desire for independence, moderated by her reluctance to leave her father wholly alone. What will Sasha decide to do? In the opinion of this reviewer,


who is familiar with the work of four of the seven authors, it would have been helpful to the critical process to know which author was responsible for each section. It would also have been interesting if the seven joint authors had left a note evaluating their experience of the shared effort of creating this novel, especially as the result of their collaboration is on the whole praiseworthy. The weakness of this book lies


not in the quality of the episodes it contains but in the structure in which the episodes are set. Six people can easily get in a lift. They might easily witness the death of the seventh. But it is less easily credible that they would feel driven to assemble every year in memory of the deceased. The willing suspension of disbelief endures while the reader is engaged in reading. But put the book down and the narrative implausibility comes to haunt you. RB


Theatrical HHHHH


Maggie Harcourt, Usborne, 439pp, 978-1-4749-4068-9, £7.99 pbk


The adjective `passionate’ has


been criminally overused but in the context of this book, no other word will do to describe the protagonist Hope’s feelings about the theatre. She has been working backstage at The Square Globe, a small local community theatre and then she is selected for an interview at her beloved Earl’s


with the technical


to work as an intern crew, which, if


it goes well, will provide her with the reference she needs to get into college to study stage management. When she is given the job she feels disbelief, delight and a determination to keep it secret


from her mother, Books for Keeps No.231 July 2018 29


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