TEENAGE FICTION:EACH ONE of these teen novels is a good enough read, but most of them make as many demands on tolerance as any teenager would, writes MARY SHINE THOMPSON
Part of the problem is the way they blithely normalise the darkly exceptional, and in the process, exceptionalise the plain, same lives that the majority of youngsters lead.
Most of the tales are set in a humdrum, realistic world. Yet their plots demand we suspend disbelief as young protagonists battle with brutality, madness, incarceration, violence, teen death, kidnapping, arson, and much, much more. Add (in some of the novels) too many implausibly happy endings and what happens is that opportunities to create tales that do not trivialise their readers are cast aside.
Jenny Valentine, who writes The Ant Colony(Harper Collins, £6.99) with such ease and acuity of observation, ultimately offers an escapist romp. Her sub-teen heroine, Bohemia, ignored by her bed-hopping, substance-abusing mother, befriends a runaway, Sam, in the sink bedsit complex they inhabit. Wide-eyed Bohemia's narrative innocently conveys more than she realises and self-absorbed Sam fills in the narrative gaps.
Readers have to accept the principle that for a teen story to work young protagonists must breach the bounds of normality: there can be no action if parents wisely foresee and outlaw dangerous situations. I was willing therefore to go along with Bohemia sorting out Sam’s secret shame, but the new family unit that emerges stretched my credulity too far.
No happy ending, however, in Tabitha Suzuma's Without Looking Back(Corgi Books, £5.99). Louis is a keen dancer, with an eye for girls, whose father kidnaps him and his siblings from their mother in Paris, and whisks them away to life on the run in Britain. Louis has to choose between his affectionate but unsound father and an emotionally neglectful mother – and possible separation from his siblings. The constant danger of discovery and the family's haphazard hurried escapes create a suspense-filled atmosphere, but there's little time devoted in the story to making sense of the grounds for Louis' decision.
It comes as a relief to encounter the low-key ordinariness with which Pauline Fisk's Flying for Frankie(Faber, £6.99) and Gayle Forman's If I Stay(Doubleday, £10.99) open, but melodrama is only pages away. Fisk's narrator, Charis, develops an unlikely friendship with rich kid Frankie, who is about to lose the one thing that matters, her life, and Forman's Mia is also facing death. Both tales progress smoothly, but they move perilously close to romanticising terminal illness and violent death.
Jane Eagland steers well clear of humdrum routine with her costume drama Wildthorn(Young Picador, £6.99), which ends with a somewhat unlikely love story. The Victorian corset adorning the cover dispels any expectation of realism. Betrayal, addiction, misspent inheritance, confinement to an asylum – little about the tale is plausible, and love is the key cliché, but it's an entertaining, unpretentious romp.
Another lark is Andy Mulligan's Ribblestrop(Simon and Schuster, £6.99). Don't be put off by the cover's waspish colour scheme: the book bulges with irreverent fun and incident. This is a boarding school experience that owes something to Anthony Buckeridge (of Jennings fame) and nothing to miserable reality. The baggy plot won't appeal to everyone, but the drinking, smoking and gun toting won't appal the virtuous because this is masterful knockabout humour.
Several of these novels raise and dash hopes for the horror genre. Joanne Dahme's Creepers(RPTeens, £9.99), set in the witch heartland of remote Massachusetts, promises "thrills and chills", but the plot is too transparent and far-fetched. Its "surprise" ending was obvious from the start. It's a pity, because it is a beautifully produced book. A horror tale of a different order is Narinder Dhami's Bang, Bang, You're Dead!(Corgi, £5.99), a school story with Columbine overtones. This could be a truly disturbing tale but the horror is mitigated by the obviousness of the sting in the tail.
The two most interesting books in the bundle are Hilary Freeman's Don't Ask(Piccadilly, £6.99) and Rowan the Strange, by Julie Hearn (Oxford Children's Press). Don't Askhas an irritating teenage narrator, Lily, who extols ad nauseam the virtues of her boyfriend, Jack. She adopts a false internet persona to befriend Jack's ex and learn about their shared past. Her ruse is successful and she's caught up in a tangled web of secrets and lies that can lead to no good.
Rowan the Strangerecovers from a slow beginning to draw us into Rowan's twilight world. It is to Hearn's credit that she can create an initially unattractive character, a violent young schizophrenic confined to a wartime asylum, and then calm her readers into identifying with him. The story is uplifting because of its honesty and warmth. There are few narrative tricks. It is not faultless: Rowan's recovery – however partial – is not fully explained by the action, but he grows in understanding and insight.
These 10 perfectly decent stories are written by skilled writers who know how fiction works. But should they settle for the perfectly decent, as most do? It’s no coincidence that seven of them have a first-person narrator and rely on the pseudo-intimacy that this device can create. At least as many have a happy ending. It seems as if the world they reflect is ordered according to conventional plots in which the “I” is all that matters; which might not be true.
Mary Shine Thompson is dean at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra (a college of Dublin City University)