YOUNG ADULT FICTION:TO THE lengthening list of young adult novels which some commentators have described as "controversial" or "shocking" must now be added Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels(David Fickling , £12.99). Published simultaneously in editions for both the teenage and adult reader (Cape, £12.99), the novel has already drawn the ire of those who see themselves as the moral literary guardians of the young, the ire being primarily directed at the book's frank depiction of a range of sexual activities.
Incest, gang rape and sodomy are all given significant roles in the narrative and at a cursory reading the overall impression may well be of a young adult novel which makes earlier “controversial” fiction in the genre appear tame .
Deriving ultimately from, but playing many variations on, the Grimm fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red,Lanagan's novel is in essence the story of a mother, her two daughters and their moves between real and fantasy worlds. In prose which, even when dealing with the sordid aspects of these worlds, is beautifully fashioned and measured, the author focuses on the contrasting characteristics of her liminal territories. The result is that a totally engrossing picture gradually (and perhaps rather slowly in the book's near-500 pages) emerges of what one character refers to at one point as "the match-and-mix of life". This is a multi-layered novel which requires and deserves attentive reading, regardless of the reader's age; it is unlikely, though, to have much appeal for the censorious adult or for anyone under 16.
The sense of timelessness – an echo of its fairy tale origins – in Lanagan's novel gives way in Judy Blundell's What I Saw and How I Lied(Scholastic, £6.99) to a period and place which are highly specific. This is the America – more precisely the New York and Florida – of 1947, where 15-year-old Evie, in the process of her own transition from adolescent to adult, is to make some shattering discoveries about the secrets which link her mother, her step-father, her grandmother and a handsome young ex-GI. The plot of the novel, while engaging in its own right, is really more important for its part in facilitating Evie's growth to young womanhood; the petulant demands of her early adolescence are soon to give way to a much more mature realisation of what the phrase "grown up" will really entail. Stylishly written, Blundell's novel also attractively draws on numerous cinematic references to the era of Bogie and Bacall to reinforce its film noir atmosphere. Highly recommended.
Rafiq, the young hero of Jane Mitchell's thought-provoking Chalkline(Walker, £5.99), does not have the luxury of speculating too much on "growing up" as a process. Rather, it is a state enforced on him (and very painfully) from the day when he is abducted from his small Kashmiri village and coerced by militants into becoming a freedom fighter. The degradation of his initial training are portrayed in visceral detail, though never merely for gratuitous effect: Mitchell's touch, even in her most horrific scenes, is confident and controlled. Rafiq's transformation from boy to boy soldier and his consequent switches of allegiance from village values to military imperatives lie at the novel's centre; both are psychologically convincing and sympathetically conveyed. A book such as this makes much contemporary "teen fiction" seem shallow by comparison.
"Well, don't assume that your hopes will come true. It's easy to think that, when you're young. Then life happens". It is not the most cheerful message to be given when, like Cat McPherson, the heroine of Nicola Morgan's Deathwatch(Walker, £6.99), you are 14 and entertain several, apparently conflicting, dreams – and their accompanying nightmares. You have to contend with parental and familial ambitions for realisation of your competitive swimming abilities, with your dawning understanding that a stalker is pursuing you, with your attachment to an internet social networking site, with an ex-boyfriend and a former scientist who share an entomological obsession. Morgan's greatest strength in this creepy and teasingly plotted thriller is to weld all of these together without sacrificing too much credibility and in the process to enable Cat – as much as you can at 14 – to become her own (young) woman.
Lauren, the 17-year-old heroine of Anne Cassidy's The Dead House(Hodder, £5.99), may be three years older than Cat but, initially at least, is no more certain of what may ensue when "life happens". She has a double difficulty. Coping with the present concerns of preparing to go to college and with the first intimations of adolescent sexuality is daunting enough but there is also the nagging – and uncertain – memory of what may have happened 10 years previously when, she has always been led to believe, her father had murdered her mother and a younger sister. As she comes to disentangle these various complexities the novel becomes part thriller and part detective story, both of which, in the main, Cassidy handles with considerable skill, conviction and sense of atmosphere.
Robert Dunbar is a commentator on children’s books and reading