TEENAGE FICTION:CITY VERSUS "culchieville"? Now that urban dwellers outnumber rural, the argument for and against is more relevant than ever, writes Niall MacMonagle.
In Kate Thompsons's new novel, Creature of the Night, 14-year-old Bobby is on a bus and heading to Clare with his Ma and younger half-brother, Dennis.
Bobby is all attitude - "I'm not staying down there. You can't make me" - but single-parent Ma, whose "whole life was paid for in instalments", has moved west to save Bobby from his "bad influence friends" and, as Bobby later discovers, "she had another reason for getting away from Dublin".
It's a riveting read from page one. Bobby's disaffected, amoral, streetwise, vulgar voice is absolutely authentic and Thompson's handling of his take on their new home and neighbours is as immediately convincing as Roddy Doyle's.
Here, urban grit meets what Bobby calls "something outside of me with a life of its own . . . a huge wild world that didn't care about cars and handbags and mobile phones".
The paranormal is at the heart of the novel. Thompson has always been interested in folk tales, superstition, piseogs and when their neighbour, Grandma Dooley, calls, she tells the Dubs "to make sure you put out a drop of milk for the fairies".
Inner-city Bobby, of course, has never heard the like and Ma is equally incredulous: "Weird isn't it? Can you believe it? In this day and age."
The supernatural gains a more powerful and sinister momentum as the novel unfolds. Their house has been built on a pathway between two forts; a 15-year-old girl died there in strange circumstances and her "terrible little voice", it is said, is heard to this day. Dennis claims he sees a little fairy woman, who enters at night through the dog flap, and the last tenant, Lars, from Sweden, has disappeared unexpectedly.
Sidestepping sentimentality, Thompson conveys extraordinarily well not only Dublin's mean streets but country rhythms, and how city trends are infecting every town in Ireland: "They even open the shops in Ennis on a Sunday now."
The Dooleys are ordinary, decent people. PJ tells his tenants when they arrive that "some other day will do fine" for the deposit and rent.
Bobby has never known the like: "I don't think either of us had ever been trusted by anyone before." The wholesome life Bobby witnesses on the farm contrasts with his mother's domestic chaos, and the gradual friendship between Colman and Bobby highlights Bobby's own deprivations.
Coley "was funny sometimes and he was easy going but he was nothing like the lads in Dublin. There was no edge to him. No danger. He was wet. He did what his da did, and his grandda."
But Bobby also realises that "there was something about Coley and his grandda, like they were going along with the flow instead of always against it all the time".
Bobby lies, steals, betrays; he smokes, drinks, does drugs. It's all par for the course. Like Fluke, Beetle and Psycho Mike, his partners in crime, he seems doomed.
Bobby takes Lars's Skoda, burns rubber and crashes it, but when PJ insists that Bobby work on the farm as payback, the pure hard graft of cutting wood, making hay, driving a tractor and fixing engines pleases Bobby despite himself.
The dignity of a job well done gains weight, and an epilogue shows Bobby, at 24, having come through the wars.
And the ending? Well, it turns into a murder mystery. The rational self says it was the fellow over the field that "done it", but then you only have to half-believe in the fairy world and you're left perplexed and haunted.
Kate Thompson has already, and deservedly, won numerous prizes: the CBI Bisto award (four times); the Whitbread (now Costa) Children's Book Award; the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize; Dublin Airport Authority Children's Book Award. This brilliant new novel, her best to date, will add to her glowing reputation.
You'll want to read Children of the Night at a sitting. I couldn't fault it. And what perfect timing. School's out. Every teenager heading into the long summer holiday should get hold of it.
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Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin
Creature of the Night By Kate Thompson The Bodley Head, 272pp. £10.99