Teen/YA: May 2007 Archives

Not so much a teenage miscreant as an individual for whom the education system and social structure around late childhood has failed to secure and keep safe, Chas, together with his best friend Devil indulges in joy-riding of the most extreme and immoderate variety when hot-wiring a heavy goods vehicle. Consequence of this night is the pair�s eventual placement in a remand home.

Running parallel to this, Chas has been writing to a prisoner on Death Row who has been accused of murdering a child. In order to be accepted onto the letter-writing programme, Chas pretends to be his mother, thereby concealing his age, a deception that later has dire consequences.

Throbbing at the heart of this gritty, urban tale is a wealth of ideas. It is the social interaction and the minutiae of power-dialectics amongst adolescent characters that Kennen observes with such accuracy.

Unlike with �Beast�, Kennen�s prodigious debut novel, the narrative and thrust of �Berserk� feels at times a little too out of check and control. The convoluted relationship between Lenny Darling and Chas and Devlin�s families, in addition to the obfuscated messages within the letters he sends when imprisoned stretches credibility to belief and beyond. Scale of many of images in the novel � the severed finger, the hedonistic consumptive feast on the lorry and the high-altitude climax � serve to eclipse many of the like-clockwork mechanics that underpin the narrative. This lends the work an air of many-a-Hollywood blockbuster, high-in-energy, huge-on-impact, yet ultimately disallowing the time and reflective space for its idea base to unfurl to the height of its potential.

The approach negates the careful teasing out of character and motivations that made �Beast� instantly so remarkable and refreshing. Its consequence is a legacy of discursive, high-impact images without the context, continuity or coherency that would have elevated this novel to being exceptional and, if addressed, will lead to Kennen�s becoming one of the most exciting new writers for the young adult market.

Bali Rai�s descriptions of the various dubious ideologies associated with the cult in the book, one of the prime suspects believed to have been implemented with the disappearance of Sophie, shows a clear understanding of the social instability caused by rhetoric and dogma that disassociates itself from even the most basic of humanist ideals. The politicised nature of the cult , a group of individuals forming an enclave of their own rigid and unquestioning beliefs, makes for a compelling, wholly convincing and engaging and thoroughly enraging narrative.

A surprise wholesale turn in narrative direction gives a highly unexpected twist in the tale. This device, however, is neither entirely satisfactory, nor presented in a manner that makes it credible within the story.

Ironically, the nature of prejudice that Rai�s prose incisively negotiates with regard to race is seemingly arbitrarily switched. Implication that the motivation for extreme behaviour carried out by one of the main characters is derived from a gender confusion that stems from infanthood is a facet of the novel that makes for a convenient explanation, but one whose superficial psychological depth succeeds only in making these passages emotionally cold, lacking in sympathy and slipping into the types of prejudice they have so skilfully manoeuvred where race is concerned.

�What if the world is all ocean� What if this is all there is? Ocean and ocean and ocean. I don�t like it Mara. I hate this wild world.�

Multiple narration and the three interwoven story threads within �Zenith� gives the novel a widened breadth of focus, an extension of influence, that lends it a power and scope far and beyond that of its already impressive predecessor, �Exodus�.

An increasingly desperate world climate � politically and geographically � forms the electric backdrop to 'Zenith'. Driven by the ardent belief that Greenland will have risen above the waters with the melting of the ice-caps, Mara sails a course of attempted salvation for herself and her people (the latter forming an increasingly insurgent crew).

Bertagna�s greatest skill as the author of this remarkable novel is successfully breathing a transcending sense of hope, courage and, over-arching, compassion out from the chaos, corruption and crisis that circumstances have engendered.

Bleakness of the world and the sheer desperation of the plights to salvage life through differentiated means of settlement and abode powered by an urgency for survival is belied by the power, lyricism and poetry of the author�s writing which stimulate thought and thoughtfulness. The ending leaves readers breathless in anticipation of a climax that must surely follow for this climate-change epic�?