Features

Grass by Cathy MacPhail
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  • Leo knows two secrets too many. If he gives either away, even to his best friend Sean, he might put himself, his friend and his family in danger. He has to make important decisions at every turn and gets himself more and more involved in a situation which leads him into even more danger and from which there is no easy escape.
  • This is a real life story of an ordinary young boy living in town where gang and gun culture are widespread. The story moves along quite nicely and increases pace after a disturbing crisis to create an exciting climax and acceptable resolution - though I still wonder what might happen after Armour and Nelis get out of prison. Is there a flaw in Leo's and MacPhail's plot?
  • MacPhail has succeeded in capturing the voice of this innocent young boy growing up in a troubled city and she shows us convincingly how the naïve can easily get trapped. Just occasionally, however, the voice slips and Leo sounds older than his years. More worryingly, some of the other voices in the novel don't always ring true. This is a great pity, as an extra layer of editing might have turned a very good novel into a superb one.
  • Nevertheless, this is a good, if disturbing read.
  • Reviewed by Gill James
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  • author : Cathy MacPhail
  • publisher : Bloomsbury
  • edition : Paperback
  • price : £6.99
  • ISBN : 9780747599111

 

The Bride’s Farewell by Meg Rosoff
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  • Carnegie winner Rosoff’s latest novel is set in the rural England of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex, in the 1850s. Faced with an impending marriage she dreads, to man whose greatest promise for her is a house full of children, sixteen-year-old Pell flees, leaving her wedding dress spread on her bed. With her, unable to resist his unspoken pleas, she takes her mute youngest half-sibling Bean, and her horse, Jack. They travel to Salisbury Horse Fair, where she is tricked out of her beloved horse and her brother vanishes. In her search for them she encounters a mysterious gypsy woman, who offers her shelter, and whose life is inextricably linked with hers, and with that of Bean. Living by her wits, and suffering hardship and abuse at the hands of unscrupulous men, Pell also discovers her own future when she meets with the enigmatic Dogman, with whom she forms a relationship which develops into an unconventional marriage of souls.
  • Rosoff is well-known for her treatment of ‘difficult’ subjects, the things in our lives that we’d prefer not to think too deeply about. In this latest gripping, poetic Bildungsroman she considers issues which remain as relevant to twenty-first-century teenagers growing up as they were in Pell’s time. Rosoff’s readers will themselves have concerns about relationships, about duty, fears of love and abuse, and their journeys towards maturity are set out in Pell’s physical journey through the countryside. In Pell she offers resolution through uncovering the courage, strength and determination within us all. There are subtle echoes of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles in the setting, in the language and in the ambience of this short novel, which provides for her readers both a link with and the promise of an even greater body of literature and experience.
  • Reviewed by Bridget Carrington
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  • author : Meg Rosoff
  • publisher : Penguin
  • edition : Hardback
  • price : £10.99
  • ISBN : 9780141382934

 

A Trick of the Dark by B R Collins
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  • Zach’s and Annis’s world is collapsing around them. Their parents are hurtling into relationship breakdown. Dad’s extra-marital affair has been discovered and revealed by Zach; their mother is locked in angry workaholism. Annis is losing the older brother she has hero worshipped. A family bonding trip to France is supposed to heal this disharmony, but the dysfunctional state of affairs has gone too far. Zach escapes to the out-of-bounds ruined barn nearby, stalked by Annis, who watches in horror as Zach rises from the dead after a wall has literally collapsed on him, to all appearances unscathed. Apparently, Zach has instinctively broken his bond with his own shadow, sending pain and hurt away, thus cheating death but remaining less than human. How Annis and Zach strive to redeem Zach’s shadow forms the substance of this absorbing, multi-layered and unusual story, in the course of which both have to delve into some very dark personal experiences.
  • Collins writes a tough, uncompromising tale, steering it courageously towards its inevitable conclusion. A lesser writer might have been content with easier solutions; Collins offers us tough love in tough language. The narrative drive is skilled, drawing the reader through twist and turn and tension as the two young people quest for nothing less than Zach’s soul.
  • In many ways this is a rites of passage novel; an exploration of the pains of adolescence, the shedding of childhood, the loss of innocence. Collins uses elements from many genres to convey her themes. At times it's a thriller, at times a horror story, a supernatural saga, a ghost story, an adventure story. The reader is carried forward by the sheer energy of the writing and the yen to know what happens next and how it will end.
  • We also want to grasp some meaning from the idea of characters being separated from their shadows. From the collapse of the wall onwards, I found I was not taking the story literally. Repeated clues were offered through references to J M Barrie’s Peter Pan story. Peter famously loses his shadow too. He fears growing up. He wants to remain a child in Neverland. Zach has recently played Peter triumphantly in the school play. Perhaps he can be seen as a dark Peter Pan fighting off the very horrors of adolescence that Peter foresaw. Significantly, the denouement in Kensington Gardens takes Zach and Annis back to the prelapsarian playground of their childhood innocence.
  • But Zach also carries copies of Donne’s poems. References, amongst others, to A Valediction Forbidding Mourning and A Lecture upon the Shadow hint at a more metaphysical reading of searching for the whole self. Both Annis and Zach have to learn that love encompasses empathy and decentres self-absorption.
  • A Trick of the Dark is certainly an absorbing, thought-provoking read. It poses more questions than it answers, and it keeps your interest to the very compelling end.
  • Reviewed by Morag Charlwood
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  • author : B R Collins
  • publisher : Bloomsbury
  • edition : Paperback
  • price : £7.99
  • ISBN : 9780747599159

 

City of Ghosts by Bali Rai
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  • The massacre of several hundred unarmed Indian civilians at the Jallianwala Bagh garden in Amritsar in 1919 is one of the bloodiest and most shameful episodes in the history of the British Raj. Many British readers will know of it, if at all, only from Richard Attenborough’s film Ghandi (1982), but it is an event that deserves to be better understood, as a significant chapter in the story of the Punjab, of British-Indian relations, and of the decline of Empire.
  • In City of Ghosts Bali Rai has attempted to give the massacre an epic treatment, interweaving the narratives of several groups of people living in an increasingly febrile Amritsar through the days and weeks leading up to the massacre. There is Bissen Singh, an injured veteran of the Great War, now addicted to opium and waiting vainly for word from his English lover. Meanwhile the orphan Gurdial, in love with a rich merchant’s daughter, is given an impossible quest by her father even as her stepmother plans her death. Gurdial’s friend Jeevan falls in with a group of violent Indian radicals intent on rising against the British. Finally there are the British officers themselves, attempting with various degrees of arrogance, decency and incompetence to keep a lid on the cauldron of resentment that Amritsar has become.
  • Rai’s combination of these narratives is I think intended to have a cumulative effect, showing multiple sides of the city in order to achieve a richly-textured, many-faceted view. This is a bold and ambitious strategy, but unfortunately it is only fitfully achieved in City of Ghosts. Despite the looming shadow of the massacre, and the common thread of a mysterious and all-knowing woman who flits between the protagonists, the different parts of the novel largely fail to cohere, and its momentum and shape are obscured rather than revealed by its disjointed narrative approach. The story of Jeevan’s partial seduction into an anti-British clique is convincingly told, but seems at odds with the magical-realist tale of Gurdial, where problems can be solved at a stroke through supernatural intervention. The British officers are too numerous and too lightly characterized to be individually memorable, while the back-story of Bissen Singh’s romance with an English nurse in a military hospital, and her uncle’s attempt to help him desert from the British army, is simply unconvincing. The complex political setting (usefully described by Rai in nine pages of historical and biographical notes at the end of the book) is admittedly hard to explain within the context of a fiction, but here too readers are more likely to be confused than aided by the approach Rai adopts.
  • City of Ghosts would perhaps have been more effective as a either a shorter book (following just the story of Jeevan, perhaps) or else a much longer one, giving full rein to its epic ambitions. Instead, it falls between two stools. The massacre at Amritsar is a subject is worthy of epic treatment – but City of Ghosts is, sadly, not that book.
  • Reviewed by Charlie Butler
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  • author : Bali Rai
  • publisher : Doubleday
  • edition : Hardback
  • price : £12.99
  • ISBN : 9780385611695

 

Legend by John Brindley
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  • This exciting, fast-paced teenage novel combines mystery, fantasy and thriller whilst addressing major scientific issues.
  • Blake is a disenchanted young man. Once a successful medal winning athlete, he seems to have lost his way. On a school trip to a Medical Research Centre he learns about a new ‘miracle’ serum which enables the laboratory mouse run at incredible speeds and never tire. To Blake this could be the answer to everything, but Vanessa, a fellow sixth-former who is suffering from Muscular Dystrophy, is very aware of the ethical issues of experimenting on animals.
  • Blake is sorely tempted and returns to the Laboratory but discovers far more than revolutionary new drugs. The nightmare world he stumbles in to tests all his preconceptions about what it is to be human and his courage and strength of character too. What he knew of as legend is real and far beyond any imagining. Blake enlists the help of Vanessa and soon they are fighting more than people’s ignorance. The work of the Research Centre is highly political and contentious and there are those who will stop at nothing to ensure Blake’s silence.
  • At times highly improbable and almost too much run and chase, this novel is rich in questions and issues concerning moral dilemmas. It also reinforces the need to be aware that differences are to be valued. An exciting read!
  • Reviewed by Louise Stothard
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  • author : John Brindley
  • publisher : Orion
  • edition : Paperback
  • price : £6.99
  • ISBN : 9781842557181

 

Sprout by Dale Peck
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  • Sprout’s eponymous hero is sixteen, gay, and lives in Kansas (which is apparently a very bad place to be if you’re gay). The book is about the development of his first serious relationship, but it’s also about death, friendship, abusive parenting and essay writing.
  • Sprout has bright green hair, dyed for him by his friend Ruthie Wilcox. She’s an eccentric and colourful character, and is almost as articulate and learned as Sprout himself. The characters are all strongly drawn, and the writing is clever and witty, if sometimes just a touch self-conscious.
  • It’s very American, both in terms of the language, some of which I just didn’t understand, and the high school setting, which also felt very alien – I don’t quite understand why, since film and television should have made American schools very familiar places. However – I’m sure its intended audience will cope with this much better than I did, and find much to enjoy in this thought provoking book.
  • Reviewed by Sue Purkiss
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  • author : Dale Peck
  • publisher : Bloomsbury
  • edition : Paperback
  • price : £6.99
  • ISBN : 9780747577621

 

Devil's Rock by Chris Speyer
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  • Zaki’s world is centred on sailing. With his brother Michael and his father, he is happiest when sailing Morveren, their boat, around the South Devon coast. One day in rough weather they try to negotiate the notorious Devil’s Rock, guarding the mouth of the River Orme.
  • They anchor for the night. Feeling estranged from his brother, sad because his mother has left home and his father is half the man he was, Zaki decides on an adventure on his own. He creeps out of Morveren at low tide in the early morning, crosses the sand and finds a cave. Penetrating deeper, he finds a skeleton and a bracelet. The tide comes in: he is trapped in the cave. But he is rescued by a strange, unfriendly girl who demands the bracelet back.
  • Thus starts an amazing adventure, involving tales of old smugglers, shapeshifting, personalities taken over by evil entities, a version of immortality and a solution of real horror. Zaki, helped by his new friend Anusha, negotiates the dangers and the sheer psychological terror induced by these strange happenings with great difficulty. Besides Anusha, his boat-building grandfather is the only unshakable prop in his life. An inventive, compelling story. But there is too much in it to maintain a clear narrative line. It is resolved by, let’s face it, two shameless narrative devices. Coincidences can be wonderful when used properly: that Anusha’s Asian father is conveniently there to explain the source of all the magic, and then a long written account of how that source was translated to the other side of the world is even more conveniently discovered, defy belief in even a story involving the fantastic. Such narrative management is just not good enough, though with the sheer weight of material it’s difficult to see what else could be done without an extra hundred pages. A pity. There’s enough powerful imagination here to fill three novels.
  • Reviewed by Dennis Hamley
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  • author : Chris Speyer
  • publisher : Bloomsbury
  • edition : Paperback Original
  • price : £6.99
  • ISBN : 9780747597520

 

The Betrayal by Mary Hooper
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  • The Betrayal concludes the trilogy set in Elizabethan England following At the Magician’s House and By Royal Command.
  • Lucy, the protagonist, is a nursemaid at the household of Dr Dee, the Queen’s magician. She is a young, resourceful girl whose quick wit and loyalty to Queen Elizabeth have allowed her to help thwart the plans of the enemies of the Crown in the previous adventures. She does this again in an intriguing story in which the supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots, threaten the life of the Queen.
  • Queen Elizabeth’s Court is on the move from Richmond Palace to Whitehall Palace in London. Lucy, along with Beth and Merryl, Dr Dee’s daughters, join the crowd gathered to witness the passage of the Royal procession. Lucy is also keen to see Tom, the Queen’s jester whom she loves. Her wish comes true, but she soon feels the pangs of jealousy, as she notices how Tom is looking after a young lady-in-waiting, Mistress Juliette.
  • As Dr Dee is asked to move to London to continue to assist the Queen with advice based on his charts, Lucy and Mistress Midge, the Dees’ housekeeper, precede the family to set up a house in the vicinity of the Palace. During these days of relative freedom, Lucy is involved in espionage missions and is bold enough to undertake investigations of her own. Disguised as a boy, she explores London and even ends up acting with a theatre company performing Shakespearean plays!
  • Moved by her sense of duty and guided by her ‘Sight’, a mysterious sixth sense, Lucy sets to unveil a traitor at the royal Court. She is convinced that Mistress Juliette is not the person she claims to be, but could her judgement be clouded by her personal feelings?
  • The Betrayal is a well-paced novel that unfolds in a convincing historical setting. Mary Hooper explains in her notes at the back of the book that she has changed some historical dates for dramatic purposes. However, the details she provides about life in Elizabethan England are so skilfully woven into the story and so fascinating that they even moved me to read more about the Statutory Law - issued to regulate fashion among the aristocracy of the time. The wealth of insight into everyday life, far from burdening it, makes The Betrayal an incredibly interesting read and one that could support the history curriculum. Useful notes and bibliography are also provided at the back of this book.
  • The plot moves fast and faultlessly to witness Lucy acting as the trusted servant, the promising actor, the charming ‘lad’ courting a Royal servant to gather information and access to Court and the dutiful daughter looking after her widowed mother.
  • Lucy is a likeable heroine who possesses a sensible approach to a variety of issues, from the running of the household to her wary view of the shady business of her gullible employer Dr Dee and his reckless companion Mr Kelly. Her adventures remain believable mostly because the author is very careful in allowing her to move in settings that are in keeping with her humble origins. Equally Lucy shares timeless values with the young teen reader who will love this novel: love it for its adventure, friendships, fashion and, ultimately, romance.
  • Reviewed by Laura Brill
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  • author : Mary Hooper
  • publisher : Bloomsbury
  • edition : No edition selected
  • price : £6.99
  • ISBN : 9780747599104

 

Alice in Love and War by Ann Turnbull
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  • ‘Take me in, please! Don’t let them send me away. I’ll be good, I promise.’ The desperate pleas of eleven-year-old Alice Newcombe fall on deaf ears as she is forced to leave her home and all things familiar after the death of her father. The only thing that she is left with is a book of notes that her father had written on apothecary, a reminder of the livelihood they once shared and enjoyed.
  • Moving on five years, we meet Alice again, now aged sixteen, who has meanwhile lived a life of cold, unloving servitude on her aunt and uncle’s farm. However, the onset of the English Civil War brings excitement and uncertainty into her young life. After falling in love with a royalist soldier, Robin Hillier, she runs away with him to join the march in the name of the King.
  • Yet, Alice learns that life is never straightforward as she finds herself abandoned and pregnant, only to suffer a painful miscarriage. Throughout the narrative, Ann Turnbull weaves the theme of apothecary in assisting her main protagonist’s survival to excellent effect, as the young Alice uses her knowledge and skill in a positive and resourceful way. Also, the role of female friendship is fully explored as the novel emphasizes the plight of both upper and lower class women in a time of great upheaval. It is here that Turnbull shows her sensitivity by allowing the reader to witness the varied situations of women without passing judgement on their individual needs and the difficulties that they face.
  • This carefully-researched novel allows the reader an insight into the English Civil War through the very likeable voice of Alice Newcombe. It is through her voice that we witness the destruction and cruelty inflicted on everyday, innocent people leading Alice to question the morals and ethics of such a war. However, there is also joy to be found in this novel as the author shows her flair for writing historical fiction by allowing the reader to see many 17th Century rituals and traditions. Alongside the positive denouement this book makes a definite and lasting impression that will leave the reader with a warm glow.
  • Reviewed by Shelley Instone
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  • Author: Ann Turnbull
  • Publisher: Walker Books
  • Edition: Paperback
  • Price: £6.99
  • ISBN: 9781406302448

 

Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve
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  • Who is Fever Crumb? What is the origin of the scar on the back of her head? What are the Movement really up to? Who will succeed in the struggle for survival?
  • Philip Reeve’s Fever Crumb is a gripping read in its own right as well as being a worthy prequel to the outstanding Mortal Engines quartet. A reader entering Reeve’s fantastical post-apocalyptic world for the first time, in the company of his eponymous, feisty heroine, experiences an unsettling blend of futuristic fantasy world, quasi-mediaeval social structures and contemporary satirical observation.
  • Over time, I imagine readers will start the series with Fever Crumb. For earlier readers, having pre-devoured the quartet, the joy of the build-up to Municipal Darwinism, traction cities and the moving back story to Shrike’s creation feels like a narrative homecoming. I might even recommend readers start with Mortal Engines: for me nothing will ever quite replace my first entry into that new world.
  • Reeve is an absorbing story-teller, magician of the narrative quest and the cliff-hanging chapter end, puppeteer of suspense and the controlled gathering of pace. He interweaves strands of multiple stories into a guileful text reminiscent of Dickensian humour, violence and beauty. His cast includes orphans, villains, goodies and baddies, those who fumble towards self-knowledge and empathy for others, and those who remain in the wings of caricature and pantomime. His fable pits reason against emotion and the resolution lies somewhere in between, characterised in Fever’s journey to discover her identity. In tune with an old fashioned story style, the fable ends when the children are rescued and sail away into the future with a travelling theatre company, ready to become players in the next story. The moral is stated in the last line of the tale; Fever has gained enough self-knowledge after all her adventures to positively assert: My name is Fever Crumb.
  • The text is full of Reeve’s trademark playful use of language, such as the Lazarus Brigade and the Resurrectory. Reeve’s inventiveness with names, such as Ted Swiney, London’s mayor, Auric Godshawk, dictatorial genius, and Thaniel Wormtimber, controller of the ghastly Paper Boys, is delicious. I love too the humour of the historic references: his sedan chair races, air balloon transportation, and the melancholy note of ephemerality captured by references back to the time of the Downsizing or the existence of mobile phone carapaces. That the engineers live in Godshawks’s head, all that remains of a once mighty edifice, is not the only hubristic reminder of Ozymandias and decrepit power structures.
  • Reeve also enjoys punning on place names which we half recognise. London landmarks such as Pickled Eel Circus and Ox-fart Circus raise a wistful smile at things passing and language transforming with time and alteration down the generations through a kind of Chinese whispers.
  • There’s serious stuff here, too. How we come to terms with who we are; how we learn to empathise, however tentatively, with other people. On a larger scale, how small we are, how self-important; how fleeting is life. And how wasteful we are, to our eternal shame; today’s consumption and waste is tomorrow’s detritus.
  • Ultimately, a book for all ages. Humorous and serious, thought-provoking and sensitive, a page-turner to keep you up ‘til the wee small hours, preferably with a torch under the bedclothes.
  • I, for one, can’t wait for the prequel’s sequel.
  • Reviewed by Morag Charlwood
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  • author : Philip Reeve
  • publisher : Scholastic
  • edition : Paperback
  • price : £12.99
  • ISBN : 9781407102429

 

Wheels of War by Sally Prue
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  • Will Nun is left behind when George Gilfry, an older boy whom he idolises, goes to be a soldier. Will, lacking any status, is too humble to be resentful and too conscious of his duty to his master and mistress to think of abandoning them in order to follow George. But the wheels of war grind inexorably on and Will finds himself the protector of the household once all the able-bodied men of the estate have been pressed into the king’s army. He helps his ‘mad’ master and his timid sister flee with their remaining staff to another house only to find it burnt to the ground. They return, painfully slowly, to their original house. George Gilfry also returns, but as a rebel not a king’s man. Will has to decide whether to follow George’s path of war with its banners and glory or the peace and pragmatism argued for by Rosie, the young servant he loves.
  • Turning wheels circle and break everywhere in this book: the wheels of the great wagon in which the household flees, strain and bow until one cracks and the fugitives are stranded; the master endlessly turns his kaleidoscope trying to make sense of its nonsensical patterns; a bath chair lurches over impossible terrain; huge worlds turn in space and tiny gold rings signify love that outlasts the bones they encircle. In the end Will realises that he and Rosie are ‘only two pieces of glass, tumbled round, fragile and small, in a wide world.’ (p272)
  • This is a beautifully written book, lyrical and reflective, that powerfully evokes a long ago pastoral world. The short passages seen from the points of view of George Gilfry and ‘mad’ Mr Winters didn’t really work; they are tantalisingly brief and I wanted to know much more about the worlds in which these characters moved and why they came to think and act as they do. And the ‘Historical Note’ at the end of the book is jarring. The events in the novel were apparently suggested by the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, but placing real history in a parallel England and supposing that the massacre led to a widespread rebellion seems spurious. The book stands perfectly well without this and the tweaking of events doesn't make much difference to the outcome of the story. Read the book for its insights into war and peace, and ignore the alternative history.
  • Reviewed by Gill Vickery
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  • author : Sally Prue
  • publisher : Oxford Children's Books
  • edition : Paperback
  • price : £5.99
  • ISBN : 9780192754394

 

Timewalker by Justin Stanchfield

 

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  • A fast-moving adventure story with sci-fi elements, set in Montana, Timewalker begins promisingly as a couple of teenage boys out driving at night witness a glowing disc-shaped craft drift across the sky, jettison something that falls 'with a wet thud' and soar away.
  • Saen Burton and his older brother 'Trick' - short for Patrick - live on a ranch with their father Aaron, who is embittered by the loss of their mother when Sean was only three. Linked to her disappearance is Sean's recurring nightmare of a mysterious girl who turns into an owl. Strange things are happening locally. Cattle and horses are being killed and mutilated. And what is the purpose of the big development down the road run by the sinister 'Paradise Project' with its ruthless millionaire boss Mr Avery and his team of tough men and women in helicopters? When Sean finally meets the girl from his dream, he finds out the truth - she comes from the future, and the fate of the human race now depends on him.
  • The book benefits from a great sense of place - the Montana setting is vivid and well realised and the author can handle spooky: Sean's nightmares sent an authentic tingle down my spine. Sean is a believable and likeable hero, aware of playing second fiddle to his more glamorous and charismatic brother, while wrestling with almost supernatural fears. The mix of rivalry and affection between the brothers rings true, as do Sean's attempts to keep the peace between 'Trick' and his father.
  • The action-packed story moves swiftly enough to glide over a number of holes in the perhaps unnecessarily complicated plot. The girl from the future has a number of powers which she uses in a somewhat arbitrary manner - if she can shift shape to avoid capture, why not use it more often? She informs us at one point that the UFOs cannot transport extra mass, such as an animal - yet a few chapters later one of the boys is about to embark with her. And genetic sampling requires no more than a swab of a few cells, not a wholesale culling of animals. A science fiction story should pay just a little more attention to science facts.
  • Reviewed by Katherine Langrish
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  • author : Justin Stanchfield
  • publisher : Usborne
  • price : £5.99
  • ISBN : 9781409505136