Right Book, Right Time, page 7
LORD OF THE FLIES William Golding A/YA UK 1954
Published not long after the end of World War II, this classic partly explores our ability to work together for the common good. It also shows how quickly the trappings of so-called civilised society can disappear. At first, the schoolboys whose plane crashes on a deserted island try to pull together. But power struggles and conflicting desires soon undermine sensible Ralph’s attempts at order. It does not take long for the boys to descend into savagery and barbarism. This is a chilling, haunting story that never loses its relevance. William Golding wrote many other fine books and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.
THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE Robert Louis Stevenson A/YA UK 1886
In this classic gothic horror story, a wealthy doctor and scientist named Dr Jekyll creates a potion, drinks it and unleashes a monster that is his other, more evil, half. The story is told from the point of view of Jekyll’s lawyer friend, John Utterson, who is, at first, merely curious about a recent incident where a little girl is apparently attacked by a ‘fiend’. He is then utterly horrified by what he uncovers.
No Worries BILL CONDON
YA AUSTRALIA 2005
Mum reckoned I was a quitter. Quit the job. Quit school. So that marked me a quitter for life. No question . . .
She blazed like a sunflower until she virtually fell asleep where she stood. Then she’d wake up refreshed and blaze again. But gradually her energy levels dropped and her frustrations grew, until the tiniest thing stressed her out . . .
From anywhere in the house I could hear her bellyaching. And I couldn’t talk to her without her yelling at me. She was like a plane spinning out of control. I knew she couldn’t pull out of the dive. I knew the crash was sure to come, just didn’t know when.
In a discussion following the film Three Dollars, the director, Robert Connolly, commented on the difficulty of portraying a good man in engaging and interesting ways. Bill Condon succeeds admirably in making us care about kind, gentle Brian Talbot. Seventeen, a school dropout in his first real job – doing night shift among laconic, rough men in a dairy – Brian is also struggling to manage life with a mother suffering a bipolar disorder. While his medical understanding is patchy, his insight and tolerance are deep and are presented in honest, realistic ways. Shiftless Dad has withdrawn to his shed, consoling himself with alcohol and escaping on fishing trips with his mates. Brian must hold things together, which is not easy, as his mum spirals out of control. But Brian is intelligent as well as sensitive, and knows when and where to find help in extreme situations. A warm, humorous, unflinching book that would be of great interest to many teenagers and their parents at a time when mental illness is often in the media.
Sexy JOYCE CAROL OATES
YA USA 2005
Girls liked to say about Darren Flynn that he was sexy, but shy. Or he was shy but sexy.
Darren is confused. Why does he feel the need to be one of the jocks? ‘A guy’s guy. A jock. Meaning you didn’t study, much. You didn’t aim for high grades.’ And what should Darren do about girls? Above all, why does he allow himself to get drawn into a stupid, nasty situation targeting Mr Tracy, the best English teacher he has had? At home, Darren’s under-educated father and older brother despise intellectual pursuits, so-called ‘weakness’, but above all they despise the idea of homosexuality. At home, as at school, there is an atmosphere of crude homophobia and no distinction between being gay or being a paedophile. In this overheated environment, tragedy is almost inevitable, and police attitudes are part of the problem. However the scary, chaotic, all-too-real party near the end of the book takes Darren in unexpected directions.
Oates, a professor of English, is an extraordinary and prolific writer, best known for huge numbers of enthralling adult novels and for many articles and reviews. Now she is also writing terrific, tough, fast-paced novels for teenagers. Sexy followed BIG MOUTH & UGLY GIRL (2002) and FREAKY GREEN EYES (2003). In each, Oates probes the so-called American Dream to reveal intolerance, conformity, hypocritical ‘family values’ and bullying.
Shooter WALTER DEAN MYERS
YA USA 2004
I remember when I was six and marched to the beat of a child.
Over the last decade of my life I have lost the cadence and de-generated into de-cadence. That is what the decades are about, the slow march to de-cadence.
This is the voice of Leonard, as reproduced in his diary, or, as he writes ‘die-ary’. Now dead by his own hand, following a shooting spree in his school, Leonard was clearly troubled. He was also fascinated by guns, which he introduced to various friends. His best friend, Cameron, and ex-girlfriend, Carla, are so alienated and desperate for friendship that they cannot allow themselves to see how disturbed Leonard is, until it is too late.
Told from multiple perspectives, Shooter is an astonishing feat of imagination and writing, based on, and inspired by, the Columbine shootings of 2004. The first two sections are in the form of interviews with Cameron and Carla, one of whom is white, the other black. One interview is with the Senior County Psychologist and the other is with an FBI Threat Assessment Analyst. These are brilliant so-called reconstructions. Newspaper reports are also included.
The tense, pared-down writing exposes the fine lines between interview styles, preconceptions and attitudes, and how difficult all this can be for fragile and already traumatised teenagers. The final section is a tour de force of insightful and imaginative writing as Myers invents the diary of the final days of the killer: a clever, witty, articulate, but damaged and hugely bitter and angry young man.
EDGY STORIES ABOUT BEING BLACK IN THE USA
walter dean myers
Walter Dean Myers was born in West Virginia in 1937 but spent most of his childhood and young adult life in Harlem. He writes in tough, realistic and compassionate ways about the experiences of black youth in the USA. His inventive, dazzling use of language and innovative structures make his over-seventy books both accessible and highly literary. He has won many awards, including the inaugural Michael L Printz award for young adult fiction, for the book MONSTER. When asked if whites should write about blacks, Myers replied ‘Of course . . . you should write about anybody you want to write about . . . But what very often happens is that, when you’re writing about a culture that’s not your own, you may hit large areas of it, but there are so many areas that you miss.’
As well as young adult novels, Myers writes picture books, short stories, poetry and non-fiction, including black history and biography.
FALLEN ANGELS 1988
Still one of the best books about the Vietnam War. (See War & Conflicts for more about the Vietnam War.)
SLAM 1996
A book with lots of basketball action but also much more. ‘Slam’ Harris, seventeen, has total control on the basketball court. But when he moves to a new, more-academic school his tough street talk only gets him into trouble. He struggles to find his way, to keep his girlfriend and to cope with the possibility that his dad is dealing drugs.
MONSTER 1999
The owner of a convenience store is shot in a robbery gone wrong. Steve Harmon, black and sixteen, is there. Was he the lookout? He is arrested and put on trial. He could face a twenty-five year sentence and he is scared. The story is relayed through Steve’s journal entries, the movie script he writes while sitting for hours in court, and astute observations from his prison cell. Who is telling the truth, Steve or the authorities?
THE GREATEST: MUHAMMAD ALI 2000
‘A story about a black man of tremendous courage, the kind of universal story that needs a writer as talented as Myers to retell it for every generation.’ (Booklist/ ALA) In his usual direct style Myers covers every aspect of this sporting legend’s difficult life.
HERE IN HARLEM: POEMS IN MANY VOICES 2004
Inspired by Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, and by his love of Harlem, Myers writes poems in different styles to match the distinctive voices of various Harlem residents. Each provides a story, a reflection or a memory to create an inspiring and revealing collection.
Skin AM VRETTOS
YA USA 2006
This is what I feel like: I’m trying to keep my balance in a cold, hard wind, standing on the tip of a gigantic metal cone that towers over everything in my world . . . if I lose my balance, I’ll go flying off the tip of the cone, and the whole world will come apart.
Skin is really fourteen-year-old Donnie’s story. It starts with a list of ‘the things you think when you come home to find that your sister has starved herself to death’. From there it travels backwards and forwards. Throughout the time leading up to Donnie’s return from school to find Karen as ‘flat as a board’, life in this household is almost unbearable for Karen and Donnie, but also for the reader. Vrettos’s extraordinarily assured first book is grimly absorbing. It is directly written and presents a clear, unsentimental portrait of a family in distress. Vrettos is too clever to create a simple cause-and-effect story that links the relentlessly bitter battle waged between the parents to Karen’s anorexia. Rather, she shows a brother and sister experiencing their domestic situation in different, yet similar, ways. Both want to disappear. Donnie’s aim at home and school is to render himself invisible, and Karen uses every possible strategy to avoid food. Mom clumsily tries to normalise life. Dad, who moves in and out, can’t seem to help picking fights. If the makings of an ice-cream sundae are not in the fridge when he decides that is what is needed to create a ‘family night’, the fight is on. For years, the siblings have escaped by huddling in blankets on the front step. Karen tries to protect Donnie, but as they grow older these simple childish tactics are not enough.
However, the parents do care, and make hapless attempts to look after their children. They force Karen into hospital a couple of times, but they are repeatedly overwhelmed by their own immaturity and power struggles. Their inability to let each other go and focus on their children leads to tragic consequences for Karen. For Donnie, some balance and a new life may be possible.
Sleeping Dogs SONYA HARTNETT
YA/A AUSTRALIA 1995
Jordan and his sister go into town to do the weekly shopping . . . People in shops lift their heads to watch them walk by, but the Willow children look at and talk to no one. Michelle walks quickly and Jordan slinks after her and the lady behind the counter of the antique shop . . . makes a comment about a witch and her white cat.
‘I feel Sonya Hartnett is a brilliant writer and goes where no other author would dare.’ (Alex, aged fifteen)
Isolated and anti-social, the Willow family (which included five children, some now adult) run a ramshackle caravan park on their desolate property. Their brutish, punitive father and fragile mother have forced the children to look inwards and to each other. Their loyalty to each other is obsessive and destructive. Griffin, also given to violence, regularly targets Jordan, a talented artist who is considered odd and therefore fair game. When Oliver, the youngest, allows blow-in Bow Fox, an aspiring painter attracted to elder sister Michelle, a glimpse into their lives and family secrets, events and emotions are unleashed that inexorably spiral into tragedy. Hartnett subtly and cleverly leaks telling facts about the characters and how they react to the dire family situation. The snarling tangle of dogs on the property heightens the sense of foreboding.
Dazzling in its grim vision, its clarity and control of language, Sleeping Dogs garnered much praise but also criticism for its uncompromising bleakness. The book won the inaugural Victorian Premier’s Award for young adult literature.
THE VERY EDGY
sonya hartnett
ALL MY DANGEROUS FRIENDS 1998
The young people in this book deliberately and determinedly chose to live a life of drugs and lawlessness. A disturbing look into a world where there seem to be no rights or wrongs, and the high price paid by some is considered worthwhile.
THURSDAY’S CHILD 2000
Set at the time of the Great Depression, in a landscape as dusty and desolate as the existence of the people in it, the book covers six years in the lives of the Flute family. Harper, now an adult, mostly remembers the strange activities of her small, mute brother, Tin, who disappeared into the burrows and mazes he tunnelled underground. Gradually, Harper comes to understand that her family’s life disappeared as well, and she begins to get some sense of herself. Hartnett won the UK Guardian Prize for this book.
FOREST 2001
Told entirely from the point of view of cats, Forest never slips into anthropomorphism, despite the cats and other animals being able to communicate. When his mistress dies, a city-bred tomcat is dumped in the forest with two kittens. The cat is determined to get back home and he survives against all odds. We also meet bush animals and see how much destruction cats have wrought on the environment. Yet our sympathies are always with the tomcat. A strange, beautiful, brilliant book, and a deserving Children’s Book Council of Australia award winner.
SURRENDER 2005
Published as an adult novel, this is one of Hartnett’s darkest works. Set, as many of Hartnett’s books are, in an isolated country town, it tells the sad, cruel, tragic story of a boy whose parents destroy his, and his mentally disabled brother’s, childhood. One boy dies and the other must endure an endlessly painful and lonely life. (See page 219 for Hartnett’s multi-award-winning book OF A BOY.)
The Song of an Innocent Bystander
IAN BONE
YA/A AUSTRALIA 2002
At precisely 2.45p.m., a man stood on one of the small tables near the service counter. He had a black sports bag clutched to his chest. Nobody noticed him until he spoke in his unremarkable voice, until his words echoed across the near-empty expanse of fake wood below him.
‘It’s time to pay your dues, Family Value,’ he said. ‘You’ve been sucking the life-blood of the masses for too long, peddling your lies, your poisons.’
This complex, tense, sharply written thriller about urban terrorism has not received the attention or accolades it deserves. It would make an excellent, thought-provoking text for senior school study. But is it too demanding, too close to how big chains do business, too confronting? It is both a forensic investigation of how advertising, consumerism and a voracious media permeate contemporary society and a complex psychological portrayal of the realities of being a witness. It asks the question, Can anyone claim to be an innocent bystander?
The book throws up important and fascinating moral dilemmas. It looks at the endless ramifications on the life of nineteen-year-old Freda and the others involved in a terrifying thirty-six-hour siege in which two people die. Then aged nine, Freda unwittingly allied herself with the one person who could save her: the deranged gunman. Since then, Freda has carried this guilt and other secrets. She also struggles to free herself from the mother who has made her life revolve around protecting Freda. Then a young man claiming to be a reporter appears. He seems to know more than he could or should. We urgently need to know what happened in that basement and what Freda really knows.
Stone Cold ROBERT SWINDELLS
YA UK 1993
You can call me Link. It’s not my name, but it’s what I say when anybody asks, which isn’t often. I’m invisible see? One of the invisible people.
Right now I’m sitting in a doorway watching passers by. They’re afraid I want something they’ve got, and they’re right. Also they don’t want to think about me. They don’t like reminding I exist.
There was uproar when Swindells won the Carnegie Medal for this tough, scary, angry book. What are we feeding our youth? As Link says above, ‘[People] don’t like reminding I exist.’ Yet it was clearly a book of its time, a time when England was still suffering the consequences of Thatcher Government policies that increased the gap between the haves and have-nots in a supposed effort to make people self-reliant.
Link has escaped his mother’s brutal boyfriend. He tries to find work, but living on the streets rapidly leads to disconnection from society and denies him access to resources that might make him employable. At first, he is supported by the streetwise know-how of Ginger. But when Ginger disappears, Link becomes easy prey for the psychotic, brutal Shelter, the ex-army man determined to rid society of ‘druggy dossers whose activities are dragging the country down’. Stone Cold is riveting to read and still highly relevant, especially in Australia, with its rising numbers of homeless.
The Story of Tom Brennan JC BURKE
YA AUSTRALIA 2005
‘We leave these words with all of you, the words of a respected citizen of this town, words that seem to represent what many of us feel – Daniel Brennan was an accident waiting to happen. What a shame his accident happened to others.’
