“At what point, in all of human history, could you toggle between someone’s thirst traps and a livestream of their funeral?” We live in an utterly bonkers world, as 17-year-old Jamie realises when he impulsively pockets a stranger’s phone after a public suicide. He doesn’t mean to – “I wasn’t some weird gravedigging, tech-fetishising creep” – but once he has it, and more crucially has unlocked it, some level of insight into Tom Burne’s life is unavoidable.
Tom, as it turns out, is a micro-influencer on new app ReelLife, with a “Goldilocks amount” of people tuning in to watch his regular videos: “Big enough to be taken seriously, but not so big that you have to deal with the incumbent pressures of being a main player on the ReelLife stage.” There is shrewd commentary on how apps reward constant engagement, without it feeling didactic. This is simply how the world works.
As Jamie learns more about Tom – and maybe falls for him a little, despite understanding intellectually that “whatever connection we had would always be one-sided and unreciprocated. I knew I could never bring him back” – the reader also wonders how much of this obsession relates to his grief over his father and its impact on his friendships.
What does it mean to mourn someone in the digital age? As one sympathetic adult puts it: “If humanity has invented this new way of living life online, then doesn’t it follow that we need to invent a new way of grieving too?” (She is an English teacher, so she is allowed sum up the novel’s theme in one sentence.)
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Seán Farrelly’s Tom Burne Has Left the Chat (Faber, €8.99) tackles this question and many more but is also a fiendishly good read – smart, thought-provoking, funny, moving. It’s a reminder of how complex and nuanced teenagers are, particularly around social media use, from a writer who (still under 30) has grown up with that world but also works with young people through Fighting Words and other programmes. Farrelly understands the importance of taking teenagers seriously and also knows how to write a compelling and sophisticated narrative. This is the first novel from the Dublin writer. I hope several more follow.
The pros and cons of online existence are also explored in Zainab Boladale’s Looking for Aurora (O’Brien Press, €11.99), the second teen novel from the journalist and presenter. Fourteen-year-old Aurora’s been on screen her entire life. “Being very visible on social media is just my every day,” she says in an interview, while also noting that “most teenagers don’t have a mom who schedules their life down to the minute”.
Like Farrelly, Boladale has invented her own social media app in order to both make a point about algorithms and to ensure the book doesn’t date too quickly. It’s a smart way to invite reflection on the forces that shape our online experiences. Aurora may be chafing under her ambitious mother’s plans to develop her career, but she also finds a genuine long-distance friend to bond with as they geek out over a shared obsession. Even so, this friend may not quite be ready to play host when Aurora decides it’s time to run away from home ...
This is a light, quick read that nevertheless touches on some important topics and as with Boladale’s first book, there’s an awareness of how beneficial it can be to have black role models in these spaces.
While a reader may hope Aurora’s mother will end up doing the right thing for her daughter, there’s more anxiety around the situation 16-year-old Ezra finds himself in after his involvement in a violent burglary. “Social says I’ll confront anything except my own mistakes,” he says, but in this instance it’s not himself he’s worried about, it’s his younger sister, Evie – “The only thing I ever done right.”
They’ve both been in care for years, with a new life that began in the safety of a bookshop (allowing for a lovely shoutout to Derry indie Little Acorns here). While Ezra’s convinced that he’s “a lost cause” and “born bad”, he’s also the one person Evie wants in her life. Unfortunately, in this instance, it means running away with him to rural Donegal, to the “armpit of nowhere”, so he’ll be within another jurisdiction. “All the talk about borders and I’m thanking the lucky stars above there is one … No walls. No tolls. No passports. It’s my ticket to salvation.”
[ Devotions by Lucy Caldwell: Poignant stories from a specialist in the formOpens in new window ]
Runaway Road (First Ink, €9.49) is Sue Divin’s third novel and, as with her previous moving titles, she’s keen to explore what Northern Ireland – “normal but not” – is like for today’s teenagers and to examine how Brexit and Covid have presented additional challenges – or as Ezra puts it, “lobbed a petrol bomb into the peace process”. Divin gives an endearing, believable voice to both siblings and invites us to consider the space for grace and forgiveness within today’s world. It is highly likely this book will make you cry at times; lean into it.
Divin is slightly more sympathetic to the justice system than Cork writer Sara Cullen, whose Blood Red Sky (Arkbound, €15.59) depicts the appalling conditions young offenders, and those merely remanded in custody, endured in Scotland during the Covid lockdowns. Sixteen-year-old Aaron doesn’t want to snitch on his friend, or reveal the truth about the fire at his school, and he’s already a known troublemaker. As the flames crackle, “the police officers stood by the side of their car, relaxed. They would follow the ambulance when it started moving. They knew Aaron Smith, of course … They could wait.”
Within The Brightons, the “screws” are almost all similarly unbothered or callous, though never cartoonishly so. Mostly it feels like a deeply broken system put under even more pressure by the pandemic. Some of the horrors here, including the rate of suicides, have – one hopes – been alleviated slightly by new legislation passed in 2024, but the book succeeds in drawing attention to how vulnerable and traumatised young people are treated, mistreated and let down by society. As a story it is occasionally clunky – the phonetic spelling becomes grating, while some plot elements are underdeveloped and stretch credibility – but it undeniably raises awareness and empathy.
Lisa Heathfield also casts a critical eye on the care system in This Boy I Hardly Know (Andersen Press, €8.99), and many of the details will resonate with readers of the previous titles – the way artistic expression can be a healthy escape, the reduction of complicated situations and people into single labels (“disruptive”), and the difficulties of keeping siblings together within foster homes.
After Dusty’s already less-than-ideal carers decide “they’ve had enough”, she’s placed in a group home, a “place [that] specialises in generating fury ... and then arresting us for it”, a place where “these people, who are meant to protect me” instead end up hurting her, allegedly for her own safety. Despite a swoony love story and a hopeful ending, this is a tough read, like the others above. These may be fictional characters but both teen and adult readers will appreciate how many real young people are stuck in situations like these, and how cruel that is.
Claire Hennessy is a writer, editor and creative writing facilitator from Dublin.
