Teen fiction reviews: their dark materials

Published on Thursday 16 October 2008 17:11

THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL EXcellent debuts in recent months and perhaps the most impressive is Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go (Walker, £12.99).

It's the story of Todd, the last boy in a community of men. In Prentisstown, the Noise virus has left men with the ability to hear each other's thoughts, those of animals too. The idea may send shivers up the spine, but how different is it to the constant intrusion of e-mails, texts, advertisements and CCTV we already suffer? When Todd finds a lone girl in the marshes he realises they have to escape, which isn't easy when your hunters can hear your every thought. Written in Todd's characteristic vernacular and brimming over with ideas about adolescence, faith and free will, this is intelligent, immersive storytelling.

The Traitor Game (Bloomsbury, 10.99) is the first novel from 26-year-old BR Collins. Evgard is a time and place created in the imaginations of friends Michael and Francis. They take great pride in inventing detailed maps and histories of their fantasy world. It helps them forget Shitley, the school bully, and the rest of his ilk. So Michael feels horribly betrayed when it appears Francis has been spilling Evgard's secrets to others. He feels he should maybe spill a few of Francis's secrets too.

The novel is split between our world and the fantasy of Evgard, where a battle rages between its indigenous population and the ruling interlopers. Themes of betrayal, friendship and courage are skilfully threaded through the two worlds and two stories. With a lesser writer, one story may well have become a chore as the reader skipped pages to get to their preferred world and favoured characters, but Collins keeps both narratives vivid, intense and wholly satisfying.

In Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book (Bloomsbury, 14.99), each chapter is almost a complete short story, taking us through the remarkable life of Nobody Owens, a boy orphaned through murder and raised by the kindly souls in the local graveyard. Released on Halloween, the book is being marketed for both adults and teenagers with covers and illustrations apparently appropriate for each age group. This is such a pity, and a nonsense, and only helps emphasise the recent blunder of age-banding books for younger readers. With a novel as brimful of Gaiman's inimitable imagination and wickedly playful delivery, this is the kind of book that bursts free from genres, pigeon-holes and all other attempts at categorisation.

Kate Thompson has won almost every award going for her books, which combine an unsentimental view of modern Ireland with its fantastical Celtic folklore. Creature of the Night (Bodley Head, 10.99) still flirts with superstition, but it's a novel tightly wrapped within a grubby hoodie. Bobby is a 14-year-old who usually runs wild with his pals on the streets of Dublin, racing stolen cars, binge-drinking – the works. He's disgusted when his mother moves him and his younger brother to a cottage in the middle of nowhere, County Clare, in an attempt to force him to mend his ways. We follow Bobby and his to need to return to Dublin with both understanding and exasperation. He's a difficult kid to like, but thanks to Thompson's exquisite ventriloquism we're forced to care. The story deepens as we discover Bobby's mother is just as troubled as he is, while the mystery of his little brother's belief in nightly faerie visitations adds yet another layer to this complex and challenging novel.

Linda Strachan's Spider (Strident, 6.99) is a teenage fiction first for both author and publisher. The novel opens with Spider at the wheel of a stolen car, his mates crammed into the passenger seats, and it's an intense ride. You can almost hear the wheels spin, smell the tyres burn. When the accident happens it's with a sickening inevitability. We then share the thoughts of the main characters as they await recrimination and attempt both physical and mental recovery. Spider believes it's entirely his fault for drawing others into his web. Strachan, however, allows the reader to see a bigger picture of leaders and their followers.

&#149 Keith Gray's latest novel, Ostrich Boys, is published by Definitions, priced 5.99.