TEENAGE:This selection is packed with sophisticated stories, writes Niall MacMonagle
ON OCTOBER 2nd, the book trade's own "Super Thursday", 800 books were launched, aimed at the Christmas market. And I say, 800 cheers! Books, unbreakable, portable, no-batteries-needed, are still the very best value around and, if people have any sense, bookshops and libraries will thrive in these recessionary times. Books for everyone - and for teenagers, a new batch. Both novelists and adolescents are engaged in constructing worlds. This is why a successful novel for young people can forge a strong connection and these new teenage novels tap into that challenging and volatile experience.
Diamond Star Girlby Judy May (O'Brien €7.95) is almost-15-year- old Lemony Smith's journal. In school this "bundle of potential with a large vocabulary," is a "super-brain," socially she's a "super-idiot". Academic parents, best friend Ro, her love longings for Nick - "Nick looked at me seven-and-a half times" - a summer on a movie set, a 300-year-old story involving a diamond necklace and treasure-hunters shape this flight-of-fancy. The tone here is as immediate as it gets; from a teen perspective little fears become huge, but Dubliner Judy May whirls this fresh, easy and ultimately feel-good entertainment into a smoothie of a read.
In Keith Gray's Ostrich Boys(Definitions, £5.99 ), a road movie of a novel, Kenny, Sim and Blake travel 261 miles with their dead friend Ross, whose ashes they've stolen and whose memory they honour by bringing him to a Scottish town called Ross because Ross had always thought it would be "cool to be Ross in Ross". High adventures in every sense fuel the storyline: there's a brilliant bungee jump scene, girl interest (Kenny and Kat were "like velcro"), an abandoned, haunted house, a police car chase and ear-sharp dialogue, but the book's strength is in how Gray darkens the narrative and leaves you wondering if Ross's death was deliberate or accidental. Ross had let his father down, or so he felt, and his best mates had not picked up on that burden. This deeper, serious mood turns an adventure story into something much more. Ostrich Boys deserves its recent shortlisting for a Costa Book Award , the category winners of which are announced on January 6th.
Exposure(Walker, £7.99), set in Latin America, is Carnegie-winner Mal Peet's third Paul Faustino novel. Soccer and skulduggery, sex, racism and murder feature in a story that echoes Shakespeare's Othello:Desmerelda, beautiful, white, wealthy, falls for and seduces Otello, the handsome football legend; Diego, Otello's agent, is but one of the villains of the piece. And the novel moves between poverty and affluence, street children and celebrities, from Bush, Felicia and Bianca's shack to beautiful rooms where beautiful people eat "light food from heavy plates". Sports journalist Faustino is on the ball (!) and the ending, where three orphans find a home and Desmerelda has "the gentleness that sad people have", leaves you satisfied. Peet's writing is slick, assured and sophisticated. Don't think this is ladlit, girls will enjoy it just as much: Exposure is a terrific teenage read.
Neil Gaiman's dramatic opening sentence, "There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife", of The Graveyard Book(Bloomsbury £14.99) is invitation enough. A man, woman and older child are murdered, in the dark of night, on page seven and a baby toddles towards a graveyard, only to be taken in by Mr and Mrs Owens, who are dead "and had been for a few hundred years now". This brilliantly improbable story is told with such skill, originality and quirky imagination that the graveyard community, brought to life, become a colourful, believable bunch. The toddler named "Nobody", the only living boy, grows up in their midst. Gaiman's conceit allows for interesting time frames and historical perspectives. "Bod", at six, is led through the ghoul-gate by a ghoulish trio including the Bishop of Bath and Wells. "The sky was red, but not the warm red of a sunset. This was an angry glowering red, the colour of an infected wound." It's got first-rate writing, eerie ideas to beat the band ("life is wasted on the living") and jokes. The dead enrich the living and open-hearted, open-eyed 15-year-old Bod is made ready to head out into the world. One of the best I've read this year and enhanced by Dave McKean's superb illustrations.
In Tim Bowler's Bloodchild(Oxford £12.99), 15-year-old Will Bly emerges memory free from a coma following a hit and run. Will, eccentric, asocial and a special-needs pupil, feels disconnected from everyone and everything and searches for the girl, "angel or hallucination", who saved his life. The ghostly, spiritual, haunting aspect, a Bowler speciality, and a mystery to be solved should hold the reader but the plot has some scaffolding showing. That said, the anger and hurt in the closing chapter and revelations of attempted murder, child trafficking, and suicide testify to Bowler's commitment to challenge his young readers.
Saci Lloyd's Costa shortlisted The Carbon Diaries 2015(Hodder £6.99) brings us to 2015 Britain and the news of carbon dioxide rationing, power cuts, climate change, paralysed traffic, looting are all delivered in sassy tones: "The news showed this footage of the Vatican going black, window after window. Later they started up emergency generators so they could power up the Pope saying something into a microphone in Latin to a bunch of cardinals. Whatever". Laura Brown charts her eccentric, dysfunctional, family's dystopian year and despite job losses, lootings, floodings, a cholera outbreak, army shootings, her sister's illness, Laura doesn't do gloom. Though interested in being in a band and wanting the "too gorgeous" guy next door, she does some serious growing up. It's fresh, hugely impressive and very readable and deserves its place on the Costa shortlist - and naturally it's on recycled paper. Definitely one for our supposedly environmentally- aware teenagers who can talk the talk but won't always even walk.
• Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin