Archives for May 2006

Faiza Guene

Definitions

1862301581

May 2006

‘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.

John Singleton

Puffin Books

0141382201

May 2006

John Singleton’s ‘Angel Blood’ is a book that, to be wholly appreciated, must be read slowly, carefully and be relished. It focuses on four children, X-Ray, Cough Cough, Lights Out and Chicken Angel. As might be discerned from these nick-names, these are no ordinary children and this is certainly no ordinary children’s novel’
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.

Chris Farnell

Tindal Street Press

0954791398

May 2006

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!

Linda Newberry

David Fickling Books

0385607482

May 2006

‘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.