Teen/YA: May 2006 Archives

“Maybe that’s why so many estates are mashed-up: not enough on the people on them vote. You’re not useful, politically speaking, if you don’t vote. When I’m eighteen, I’ll vote. You never get a chance to speak out round here. So when you’ve got it, grab it.”

The story behind “Just like tomorrow” is at once fascinating and intriguing. Written by Faiza Guene, the daughter of Algerian immigrants, at the age of seventeen, the novel’s potential was quickly recognised by Boris Seguin, the director of a neighbourhood cultural centre with which Faiza was involved. Seguin showed the opening chapters to his sister, an editor at a French publishing house and Faiza was offered a contract.

Since then “Kiffe Kiffe Demain” – the French title of the novel which appropriates Arabic and more traditional French – has gone on to sell 200,000 copies in France, has been translated into 26 languages and has led to Faiza’s being requested to give numerous lectures, have a monthly radio column as well as voice opinions on the Paris riots.

In spite of the considerable acclaim the novel has garnered and in spite of the insight it offers into high-rise life in the Parisian suburbs, “Just like tomorrow” does not read as a wholly convincing novel. The danger with engaging stories that surround the conception of a book is that they may eclipse the writing itself. That is true with “Just like tomorrow” and rightly so for the compassion, good-humour, warmth and intelligence that Faiza radiates in interviews is entirely deserving of celebration.

Faiza comments that; “not many people from my background, with my social and cultural origins, are represented in the media or have a voice.” It is herein that the intrinsic value of “Just like tomorrow” lies, for it does just that, offering a voice to the underrepresented, if not to the misrepresented…

The story is an account of Doria, a somewhat obstreperous fifteen-year-old, who being female, the daughter of a Moroccan Muslim, disallowed the opportunity to retake a year at school because there are two few places and admired by neeky Nabil has an understandably bleak, introspective outlook on life.

Throughout the novel Doria sees a psychiatrist and it is through these, that possibilities begin to open out for her. Faiza’s narrative offers great insight at points, it can be tender and genuinely touching and it is strength of Doria’s voice that is the real success in this, at-points-frustratingly-non-cohesive book.

“Just like tomorrow” is a book that deserves to be read, it shows great promise and it is the promise that should at once be recognised and regaled here rather than efforts to portray Guene as the Bronte of the Burbs, a difficult claim for even the most experienced writer to live up to. It is certainly to be hoped Faiza Guene continues her writing endeavours for if so, surely a bright career stretches ahead of her… Mention should be given to Sarah Adams translation which, as with the ‘Golem’ series, admirably brings the slang-uage of the suburbs verve and liveliness.

Set in what appears to be a medical isolation unit, known to the children as the Bin, language is paramount in this world which is hyper-sensitive to the power relation between children and adults.

“Angel Blood” is a novel which evades easy categorisation, in many ways it is a fantasy, establishing its own vividly realised and, at times disquieting, interior world that is embellished and made bold by the language of the children who inhabit it…

Language and perception, they bind the four outcast children together founding the sense of community and kinship from which their friendships are forged. Gradually the interiority of the children’s world and the uncertainty regarding their future prompts them to make a bid for freedom. Toward this end, they are reluctantly aided by Nail and his girlfriend Natalie, whose story has been interspersed amongst those of the children. Disturbing and challenging in parts, “Angel Blood” is a novel that prompts consideration into our perception of the world and of beauty versus difference. The cultural bubble that the children grow up in defies as to the ways children are educated about the world that surround them and the types of accumulated prejudice and tardiness-of-thought that can be inherited. Readers are guaranteed a thought-provoking read and are likely to find their outlook altered... This is a novel that elicits response and whose ideas are deserving of discussion, making it an ideal choice for reading groups.

New technologies have stretched further still the enigma of The Ship of Theseus, which has puzzled philosophers for centuries… What if Theseus himself were to be recreated atom, by atom and his memories replicated? How would we discern the ‘true’ Theseus? Taking cloning as its preserve, this is a question that runs central to “Mark II”,

Suffering from a degenerative illness, Mark is dying. Understandably his family have difficulty coming to terms with the imminent loss of their son, so it is that they approach Laz-R-Us, a company who are not only able to recreate loved ones, but also to replicate the basic memories believed to have structured that person’s character using a patented system known as Kwik-Learn.

Advances in modern day science and technologies have posed new ethical dilemmas for society. “Mark II” is very much a tale of our time, it challenges concepts of individuality, of love, memory, learning, mortality, commercial profiteering and Godly irreverence.

Poignant and moving, it is impossible not to feel combined pathos and empathy for Mark’s clone who, in outward appearance and expectations, is the equal of the deceased Mark. This, however, is discordant with the low levels of understanding and comprehension that Mark holds for the world that surrounds him, and it is Phil’s endeavours to teach the clone of his best friend worldly-wisdom, whilst at once simultaneously grieving the loss of his best friend per-se, that form the novel’s most powerful and memorable sequences.

It is friendship and its depiction that are the lynch-pins of this novel, its ending forces consideration as to whether Mark’s clone has been assimilated into the person whom Mark was held to be, or whether his future is made free by the friendship he is able to continue with Phil… Highly gripping, highly thought-provoking and highly contemporary in both theme and approach this is definitely one to watch!

“How can you begin to know? I have hidden my feelings so very cleverly, have I not? Well enough to keep you in ignorance, you who thought you knew me? But how can I live otherwise – without keeping my feelings in suppression?”

Fourwinds is the self-designed manifestation of its affluent owner, Ernest Farrow’s controlling nature. Set around the turn of the twentieth century, the novel opens as Samuel Godwin arrives at the house having successfully gained employment as art tutor to Ernest Farrow’s daughters the wild Marianne and Juliana.

Named Fourwinds because of a sculptural enterprise that would have seen four depictions of the wind – Northerly, Easterly, Southerly and Westerly, the Westerly wind was apparently never completed. On Samuel’s approach to the house, he encounters for the first-time Marianne, who is desperately searching for the Westerly wind, believing this holds the key to securing her family’s happiness… Indeed, the fourth wind is a key, it is central to the mysteries and the secrets that each Farrow family member holds and around which the story of this novel is woven.

Told jointly through the shifting view of Samuel and Charlotte Agnew – governess to the girls – and with brief epistolary interludes, the book keeps readers guessing and in anticipation of its shocking revelations. It’s narrative form bring to mind the novels of Wilkie Collins and Samuel’s position as aspiring artist in position of tutorage to two siblings is reminiscent of “The Woman in White”.

“Set in Stone” is about secrets that have been submerged from society to aid appearances of acceptability and decorum, it is about the strains these exert upon family ties and the ways in which, under these circumstances, families can tie us down. Ultimately, “Set in Stone” is about avoiding the past petrifying or paralysing our present, thereby denying our future. It is about healing and is an intensely admirable and intriguing novel.

Set in Afghanistan in the months following September 11th and endorsed by Amnesty International, here is a book to contribute to a better understanding. Alternate chapters give us the stories of two heroines. Najmah, an Afghan girl, sees her father and brother conscripted to the Taliban, and her mother and baby brother killed in an American air raid. Lost and alone, she begins the dangerous journey through the mountains to Pakistan, where she hopes to find her family again. Elaine, an American woman, is also alone. Living in Pakistan after converting to Islam and marrying an Afghan doctor, she has not heard from him since he left to establish a hospital. Whilst she waits she teaches refugee children under the persimmon tree in her garden.

The two different viewpoints work well. From Najmah we get a picture of everyday life in rural Afghanistan. Staples draws on her experiences as a UPI reporter in Afghanistan and Pakistan to paint a picture of day-to-day life rich in fascinating and evocative details. Set against this normality the accounts of the death of Najmah’s mother and baby brother are particularly powerful and moving. From Elaine (known as Nusrat) we get a view of the contrasts between Western and Middle Eastern culture. By giving us an insight into two hearts and minds Staples also shows us the similarities, in a wonderful celebration of our common humanity.

When at last Najmah and Nusrat do find each other, their shared feelings of anxiety and loss, plus their shared interest in the stars, gives them the comfort and strength they need. Don’t expect a happy ending, Staples is a realist. But she shows that hard truths can be accepted, with courage and dignity.

Based in and around The Body of the Christ high school, a setting familiar to readers of Anthony McGowan’s first anarchic adventure for adolescents, ‘Hell Bent’, this second novel, “Henry Tumour” sustains the distinctive and perhaps to many adults repugnant narrative voice which has proved itself so resonant with teenage boys.

The novel opens with the singular and perplexing comment, “Arsecheese”. If this serves to bewilder readers, puzzlement is matched by that of the book’s protagonist, Hector Brunty.

Hector is, in many ways a typical teenager; self-conscious, part-tortured at school by bullies and holding a burgeoning interest in girls – most especially for Uma Upshaw… Ostensibly the novel is about Hector coming to terms with, and learning to cope with his alter-ego, Henry, a talking brain-tumour. Values lie more definitely, however, in the development of Henry’s character, his increasingly assured self-belief and his desires and wants which at points – when not tempered – make for a genuinely disturbing and challenging read.

An irreverent and some might say a highly suspect idea from the stand-point of political correctness, the novel is actually highly thought provoking and genuinely very funny. Anthony McGowan is bringing similar freshness of voice and barrels-of-belly-laughs to boys’ novels that Louis Rennison did for girls… Unlike Rennison, however, more ‘serious’ issues are interwoven here, not following moralising or overtly pedagogic means, but constantly pinioning these through the thoughts, feelings and often confusions of Hector.