Teenage Fiction It can hardly be more than a coincidence - albeit an interesting one - that three of the most impressive of the first teenage novels of 2007 should open with a hero or heroine lying in an anaesthetised state in a hospital bed. Whatever the explanation for this thematic focus, it is good to be able to report that their concern with the comatose has not resulted in sleepy narrative or lethargic style; rather, they are all strong, powerfully written, emotion-driven stories, remarkably free from the more usual obsessions of the genre.
The most dramatic of the three, by some distance, is Kevin Brooks's Being. Here, 16-year-old Robert Smith's return to consciousness after what should have been a routine endoscopic procedure is the prelude to a sequence of fast-moving events, triggered by the horrific discovery that there are "unhuman things" inside his newly opened body. Part science fiction, part psychological thriller and part quest story in which an orphaned teenager embarks on a hectic search to find and assert his identity, Brooks's novel assembles a cast of dark, edgy characters who come together to provide a reading experience which, if occasionally gruesome, is always compelling.
Sharon Dogar's Waves has, at its heart, a mystery, the unravelling of which is handled with skill and elegance. What precisely happened on a surfing holiday in Cornwall that has resulted in 16-year-old Charley's unconsciousness? Sometimes via the voice of her younger brother Hal and sometimes via Charley's own occasional articulate moments, we move between past and present as a bittersweet story emerges of adolescent love and sexuality, of pain and loss. The depiction of the special bond between Charley and Hal and of the supernatural way the bond allows her to communicate with him provides one of the novel's highlights, as does the poetic interplay of the many literal and metaphorical "waves" which underpin the narrative.
The special bond which we see depicted in Alison McGhee's All Rivers Flow to the Sea is that between 17-year-old Rose and Ivy, her older sister. The latter, as a result of a road accident, now lies in a coma, a state of affairs provoking a range of responses from family and friends but, most dramatically, from Rose. In her need to give expression to her feelings, she throws herself into a series of sexual relationships: this is a search for solace which, predictably perhaps, will bring its own emotional complications. McGhee successfully places these individual and familial traumas within a framework which, with both its historical and more contemporary references, endows the merely personal consequences of "living without love" with much wider poignancy.
Sibling relationships, but on this occasion between brother and brother, also dominate David Levithan's Are We There Yet?, a novel which admirably manages to combine wit and wisdom. Sixteen-year-old Elijah and 23-year-old Danny, young Americans who would seem to have developed very different personalities and outlooks, are sent by anxious parents on a European holiday in an effort to effect better mutual understandings. In the ensuing, entertaining, plot Elijah meets Julia and one set of expectations is set in train; quite another develops when Julia meets Danny. For all its light-heartedness, Levithan's novel casts considerable illumination on the complexities of the business often too simplistically referred to as "growing up".
"Life," reflects Elvin, the 15-year-old hero of Chris Lynch's Me, Dead Dad and Alcatraz, is "so hysterically funny and unfair and inconclusive." He has good reasons to think so, not the least being the unexpected reappearance of uncle Alex, previously thought to be dead. Now seeking forgiveness for earlier financial sculduggeries, Alex sets himself the task of becoming Elvin's mentor, attempting to guide him towards a "real man" adulthood. When sceptical, wise-cracking youth confronts avuncular eccentricity the consequences are hilarious, particularly in a sequence set in a gym: Lynch has a mischievous insight into the special kind of adolescent embarrassments which may raise themselves in male locker rooms.
There is a great deal of the "unfair and inconclusive" in the lives portrayed in Julia Bell's Dirty Work, though very little that could be perceived as funny. The subject here is the teenage sex trade, as we pursue the destinies of two young women from very differing backgrounds brought together in enforced participation in prostitution. From Russia comes Oksana, from Norfolk comes Hope; the temporary shared squalor of their lives serves as background for a story which offers an unremittingly bleak commentary on what comes across as a contemporary form of slavery. This is a novel which deals responsibly with a subject which many may find distasteful, though its overall impact is slightly weakened by plot details which stretch credibility to its limit.
Robert Dunbar is a commentator on children's books and reading
Being By Kevin Brooks, Penguin, £9.99 Waves By Sharon Dogar Chicken House, £10.99 All Rivers Flow to the Sea By Alison McGhee Walker, £5.99 Are We There Yet? By David Levithan HarperCollins, £5.99Me, Dead Dad and Alcatraz By Chris Lynch Bloomsbury, £6.99 Dirty Work By Julia Bell Young Picador, £9.99