Recently in Teen/YA Category

Both the futuristic setting and the cover design led me to expect a different type of young adult novel. The "Coming soon... The Carbon Diaries 2017" facing page 1 gives the clue to the type of book Saci Lloyd has written. I read it on a train travelling to and from the Bacon and Rothko exhibitions and the book was a welcome contrast to the heavily engaging content seen there.
What we have in Carbon Diaries is essentially a family sitcom as reported by one of the daughters. World energy supplies have reached such a pass that each family is given a carbon footprint ration. The authorities respond swiftly whenever the ration is exceeded. Just six months into the situation the father is cracking up. Because 2015 is not all that far away, and because the author is careful not to be too outlandish in her predicted vision of Britain seven years from now, the book is very believable, which makes it at once highly comic and thought-provoking. Most readers, once they've finished laughing, will think, Hang on a minute, is this really the way things are heading? How are we going to cope?

I really haven't much to say about this superb novel of remembrance, other than to urge you to read it. No book this author writes is in any essential sense a young adult novel or piece of teen fiction with a readership confined to adolescents.

Hartnett is the real thing.

So I've finally got round to reading Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks (now out in paperback).

Perhaps it was just me in the middle of being particularly negative, but I found Being, his first book for Penguin, a touch on the cold side. It was ambitious, different, page-turning, very good... but for me (at the time) it lacked that quintessential Brooks atmosphere that made those first few novels for Chicken House so memorable.

Black Rabbit Summer is back in the groove. Dialogue-driven but also occasionally poetic in its choice of epithet - 'soured silence' - Brooks' style is a joy. I cannot imagine his writing requires any sentence-level editing.

Brooks must remember his own adolescence well to be able to write about teenagers as he does. He remembers in particular how important terrain is. How young people have their own routes for getting from A to B. In particular, the off-road suburban terrain of footpaths, derelict areas, embankments, cut-throughs. He describes these so well. He writes about them as if he were still a 15-year-old himself, dashing through an alleyway.

He also remembers that for 15/16 year olds their 13/14 year old selves are an age away. There is emotional tension at the start of this book between the main character, Pete, and Nicole. They had been boy and girlfriend a couple of years ago, but not since. Meeting in a den before attending a local fairground the group of friends drink and smoke. The tension mounts.

Established early on is Pete's feeling for Raymond, a boy ostracised by everyone else. Raymond is a loner who spends much of his time out in the garden beside the hutch of his pet black rabbit.

Pete's father is a policeman and when people start to go missing following the night at the fair, Pete becomes both investigator and investigated. The second half of the novel is so well plotted and developed one hopes Penguin will have the sense to enter this book for a regular crime fiction award. It's a fantastic read, to be recommended for adoloscents and adults alike.

Personal aspirations and cultural expectation converge in this, Alexie Sherman's first novel for young adults. Junior exists as an outsider, from the world as a Native American living on a reservation, to his peers as an individual whose thinking, behaviour, actions and reactions are slower than with many because of excess cerebral spinal fluid at birth.

Through the course of the novel Junior battles against the prejudices of those around him, ultimately resulting in a decision that ostracises him from his people. The challenge then becomes proving himself, his worth and talent both intellectually and physically.

Junior's unique perspective on life results in the gradual acquisition of firm friendships and he battles towards a position whereby his individuality is recognised and acknowledged. At points painful, partly positive but always poignant, this an accomplished and astoundingly life-affirming novel.

Raven’s grief, despair and guilt moves through stages as the novel progresses. He denies the reality of what has happened, weaving around himself a protective film of lies and half-truths. Though the stigma of mental health problems are encountered through the levels of misunderstanding and of miscomprehension that surround Raven, the mind is depicted here as resilient, strong and in a process of renewal and of resolution.

Suzuma’s willingness to draw from a reservoir of biographical experience to colour her characters with credibility makes this a courageous novel and, in an age when one in four people experience mental health problems throughout their lives, a highly worthwhile and contemporaneous one also.

Against this backdrop, Shehana herself, a Londoner with Bangladeshi family ties, rallies against the fast-approaching marriage that her family feel is so timely but that represent a very real blockade to the future she herself aspires towards and her desire to enter higher education.

Race assumptions are constantly subverted and just what it means to belong to a particular group and to identify ourselves within a specific set of cultural and social ideologies is probed incisively with by Johnson. This is a gripping thriller, with rich writing that envelops and engages from start to finish and that reveals the dehumanising influences of viewing the body as object, distinct from mind and personality. In parts dark, in parts disturbing, this is a smart and sassy novel with a strongly defined sense of pace and of purpose. A relevant and resonant novel that is well worthy of promotion.

So begins a desperate plight to escape pursuers, to find sanctuary to seek assistance where available, but to be aware of the position and danger such a trust necessarily places himself and Ninian within.

Jauncey’s ending to the novel leaves the swathes of problems over the nature of land-ownership and possession open and poses the chilling question as to whether we are in fact now fighting for the political and philosophical space of childhood itself…

Following the life and thoughts of Rachel Riley through a series of diary entries, the novel is similar in form and in feel to the Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennison. A distinction exists, however, in that a more coherent thread of storylines and plots courses beneath the self-conscious, though rarely self-aware, diary entries of the protagonist.

Resolved that the current year truly will be her most dramatically tragic yet, Rachel is so focused upon this aim, she is unaware of the more irregular and surreal aspects of her life. Ascorbic and probing, writing so sharp and so pointed should carry a safety warning!

Following the separation of his mother and father, Kyle has become socially withdrawn. Embarking upon a class trip, the train that Kyle and his peers are on is de-railed and hangs precariously between safety and danger, life and death, for all those on board.

One of the few individuals conscious on the train, Kyle finds that he is able to experience at first hand the dreams – and thereby the fears, guilt and neuroses – that his fellow passengers are subject to…

Large questions regarding, faith, belief, reality, truth, preordination and psych-kinesis are stimulated and are constantly brought to the fore as the narrative pace races through a total of thirteen nightmares told in a frame-setting.

Blackman depicts horror at its most chilling and efficacious through drawing the shades of darkness from sources identifiable to the everyman. The personal base to several of the dream described makes this a brave work, its considered nature and seriousness of intent ensuring it is, at once, in equal parts worthwhile.

The prank falls somewhat flat, however, when an apparition does indeed appear and begins maligning Justin, his sister and Daniel with an ever forceful vehemence. As in previous works, “The Devil’s Footsteps” and “The Intruders”, Richardson’s prose is sparse, taut and highly charged. The book transcends much of the genre through its exposure of intergenerational familial dysfunction and the ramifications of a failure to reach resolution. Dark, brooding and boldly different...