TEEN FICTION:A BOOK'S OPENING page invites us to step into a room or to go on the road. Simplistic analogies, perhaps, but some books are quiet, introspective and offer interiority; others open up to offer wide skies and bigger adventures. And then there's the book that brings us right inside another's head. And one kind is no more interesting or important than the other. Young readers often prefer crash-bang excitement but those quieter reading moments that heighten the emotional, psychological and spiritual prove vital on the teenage reading path.
Damian Kelleher's Life Interrupted(Picadilly, £6.99), grounded in reality, impressively tackles the drama of an absent father and a mother dying from cancer. Fourteen-year-old Luke and football-mad 11-year-old Jesse – "if it'll move, he'll kick it" – are regular kids confronting unbearable loss. The hospital scenes and the ache and confusion felt by the teenagers make for a moving read. Mum's last visit home, her death and Jesse's 2am loneliness are genuinely moving, and Uncle Stu, who replaces the dreadful, Irish home-help, Bridie McLafferty, the novel's only caricature, not only brings a sense of a future into the boys' lives, but his new, surprising relationship adds another interesting dimension. This is a sad, serious and rewarding read and Kelleher's lighter, upbeat moments balance the narrative.
That innocent children are abducted, abused and imprisoned prompted Anna Perera to write Guantanamo Boy(Puffin, £6.99). This is a political, passionate book that begins in Rochdale, Lancashire. When 15-year-old Khalid and his family visit relations in Pakinstan, a "paranoid hellhole", things go seriously wrong. His father goes missing and Khalid himself is abducted, imprisoned and transferred to Kandahar, where he is strip-searched, shorn "with the same tenderness as a sheep shearer with a thousand fleeces to go" and tortured. His innocence and his pleadings cut no ice with post-9/11 American soldiers desperate for retaliation. Cultures clash; the result is ugly. A computer game is interpreted with sinister implications. Light- and water-torture sequences, the hellish conditions, and eventually Guantanamo, "the worst of the worst", are grimly frightening, but Harry, a selfless English lawyer, fights for justice. Could it happen? It has happened. That's why teenagers should read this book.
In Colony(Oxford £5.99), JA Henderson tells us that there are 6.6 billion humans on earth and 100,000,000,000,000,000 ants – that's one hundred thousand trillion – and ants existed on Earth a hundred million years before humanity. Thank you for that.
Henderson’s story, set in California, Scotland, a very remote island in the northeast Atlantic and upstate New York, features corpses “covered with swarming black dots”, shootings, killings, deaths – did they jump or were they pushed?, bloodbaths, revelations, lies, kidnapping and a detective trio. Though it might sound absurd, it’s a terrific read. Espionage meets an apocalyptic soap opera (“Neither of us can go to the police. We’ve both done too much wrong”) and you keep turning those pages.
It’s set in 2009 but the back story from 1980 is well handled, especially Dan Salty and Emily’s story, but I don’t want to give anything away. Grab this. You won’t regret it.
Sharon Dogar's first novel, Waves,was an exceptional debut and Falling(Chicken House £6.99) is an impressive follow-up. Superior writing, originality, and serious, interesting, challenging ideas make this a success. Neesh, a "Paki" – we're in xenophobic Britain – has been a self-harming, elective mute ever since her father abandoned the family. The story is told from four perspectives: Neesh; Sammy, a childhood friend; Kefin, a nasty piece of work; and Sammy's Grandpa, Jake, in Kashmir.
Dogar wisely blends first- and third-person voices and weaves a complex narrative that really catches adolescent rivalries, vulgarities, violence, crushes, sexuality and love. From inside Neesh’s consciousness and dream world – “I can see inside people sometimes” – Dogar paints a way of looking that borders on magic – or is it witchcraft? There’s certainly mystery and the narrative’s paranormal elements deepen the novel’s powerful effect. Neesh’s mother, angry, obsessive, insulting, fearful, adds to her daughter’s misery . That “it’s not about us, it’s the world around us” rings true for Jake and Neesh, generations apart, but eventually Jake’s tragic tale, involving Neesh’s great-aunt Farida, is counterbalanced by Sammy and Neesh’s promise-filled, hopeful future.
A boy, a dog, a wood and a pond are combined to assume sinister dimensions in Shadow Bringer(Oxford £9.99) by David Calcutt. The shifting, menacing black shape – "twisting, writhing, growing" – that Nathan sees in the sky, in water, in a computer screen, in his cousin's eyes, together with sounds in the attic and the voices he hears in his head gradually become more strange and frightening as the psychological drama unfolds. The weird infiltrates the ordinary: Joe falls into the pool, he tells his mate Nathan that "something pulled me down"; strange other-world voices on Nathan's mobile phone; a dog with an arrow in its neck. But Calcutt's parallel universe device with cave-dweller Rasha and the Old Woman is less of a success. Rasha enters Nathan's world to seek "the Creature" that Nathan "called". This doesn't work but younger, fresher minds may well enjoy that aspect too. A blazing row, an accident and an apparition in a wardrobe at the end redeem things.
The Hunger Games (Scholastic £6.99), the first of a trilogy by Suzanne Collins, takes reality TV beyond the beyond. The United States have been and gone and we are in dystopian Panem. Each year, 24 teenagers, from 12 districts, take part in Hunger Games, in a vast outdoor arena: kill or be killed. Randomly drawn names play this survival game. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark represent District 12 and must battle it out, but a developing relationship complicates things. The make-over process for contestants is X Factorto the nth degree; the pampering and posturing, the parade, the trials and interviews are colourfully done. Collins's fluent style and imagination shape a futuristic tale about contemporary issues.
Action and adventure, threatening “muttations” (dead contestants have morphed into wolves), and a rule change combine in an improbable plot but a surprisingly enjoyable one.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin.
TEXT – A Transition Year English Reader
, which he edited, has just been published by The Celtic Press. He is a judge of this year’s Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award