Context is everything. When the love interest in David Almond's Bone Music (Hodder Children's Books, £12.99) tells the protagonist "You're special", it's not a pick-up line or a red flag. Almond, best known for Skellig, writes tales that are almost like fables, addressing big themes through lyrical prose and flickers of magic.
In this latest, we meet Sylvia Carr, “a girl of the 21st century, a girl troubled by wars, by disgraceful politicians, by global heating, a girl who yearned for hope, for things to change”. Separated from her best friend when her mother relocates to the northern English countryside, Sylvia initially resents the move, then slowly begins to connect with the world around her.
The aptly named Gabriel is just one part of this, though it is he who explains to her the magic of the hollow bone, taken from a bird’s wing: “All music was magic... All song was a spell. When the magician played the hollow bone, they merged with beasts and birds. Play the bone of an eagle, and you become the eagle. The bone of a fox and you become the fox. Play it well enough, and you cross the borders between the living and the dead.”
There is a timeless quality to Almond’s writing, even as he weaves in modern technology and the stresses of today’s teenagers. He can get away with lines that might, in lesser hands, seem like pandering: talk of “dreadful adults who failed and kept on failing”, or how grown-ups need to learn from the young. Here he offers up a story that seems, at first glance, to be about appreciating the beauty of nature, a not-so-coded lesson on why our environment is important, and then swerves into strange, delirious territory. It’s a remarkable book that already feels like a classic; it is sure to become one.
Those borders between the living and the dead are made literal in Krystal Sutherland's House of Hollow (Hot Key Books, £8.99), a gripping dark fairytale about three beautiful sisters narrated by the youngest, Iris. When she was seven, Iris and her sisters disappeared for a month; conspiracy theories about what happened to them still swirl around the internet. Media interest in the family is stoked by her eldest sister Grey's fame as a model and fashion designer, even as Iris does her best to be invisible, and to not tap into the strange, seductive power she knows she shares with her siblings.
When Grey goes missing, and a man wearing a bull’s skull begins to appear everywhere, it’s the beginning of an untangling of the truth about what happened all those years ago. Sutherland embraces the fairytale motifs, giving us a dark terrifying forest that seeps into the “real” world; when Iris looks in her sister’s mouth she sees “a nest of rotten leaves and carrion flowers and ants, all growing in her. Swollen with her blood. Bursting from the flesh of her throat.”
The lush descriptions combined with snappy dialogue make this an appealing read, particularly for those with a taste for the macabre.
"I think they just thought it was normal... There are so many words for this kind of thing in adulthood, you know? Like 'harassment' and 'abuse'. But because it's kids hurting other kids, it's called bullying. I don't get why that's okay. They... they destroyed me." Sara Barnard excels at quietly devastating, yet ultimately hopeful, books about teenage girls, and she does it again with Destination Anywhere (Macmillan, £7.99).
Peyton has been friendless all the way through school; in a heart-breaking sequence early on she itemises the small moments of cruelty that add up to a lifetime of isolation. Starting over for sixth form college, she’s desperate for friends – and finds them, along with a boyfriend she really prefers “on the other end of a WhatsApp conversation, just words and emojis and potential”.
Her new life with friends, albeit bad ones, is not ideal. Looking back from a year later, she reflects, “You could make a blanket out of all these red flags.” It’s not clear quite what has happened, but we do know it’s dramatic enough to make her flee the country, hopping on a flight to Vancouver purchased with her dad’s credit card and sending an email to her parents beginning with “Don’t freak out”. (They, of course, do.)
Barnard manages to make what becomes a road trip novel seem plausible through small, realistic touches; one of her travel companions talks to Peyton’s mum on the phone to reassure her, and her status as the baby of the group is often addressed. Seventeen may be almost an adult, but not quite. Cliches about “finding yourself” through travel are avoided here, thankfully, but there’s still a suitable level of hope and wonder at going on an adventure and seeing beautiful things.
Western Canada (quite rightly) gets a lot of love, enhanced by illustrations from Christiane Fürtges, representing Peyton’s sketchbook. At a time when our own travel is so heavily curtailed, books like this are a small but real consolation. Highly, highly recommended.
For slightly younger readers, Brian Conaghan's Cardboard Cowboys (Bloomsbury, £6.99) also delves into school bullying. Lenny hates his body, hates "carting it around like a sopping sheep on my back", and hates that it's the reason he's picked on. He reflects on himself in a haiku (Conaghan's fondness for poetry is often shared by his protagonists): "Here is what I think:/ People like me won't find love/ I will not be found."
Lenny too is off on an adventure, though on a smaller scale; he wants to go see his brother, and enlists the help of a homeless man he meets while skipping school in order to make it happen. Like Barnard, Conaghan is careful to balance familiar tropes – in this case, a friendship between an understanding adult and a child – with real-world pragmatism, and it adds tremendously to the authenticity rather than feeling like a set of child-protection guidelines. This is an energetic charmer of a book.
Debut author Sue Divin follows in the footsteps of Joan Lingard's iconic Kevin and Sadie books with her tale of love between a Protestant girl and Catholic boy in Northern Ireland, Guard Your Heart (Macmillan, £7.99). The fresh twist is that the Troubles have ended – both Aidan and Iona were born the day the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement was signed. Yet, as Iona notes in 2016, "the attitudes hadn't changed, just the tools. We fought with culture now, not with guns."
Aidan’s post-exams night out sees him become the victim of a sectarian attack; Iona’s brother’s friends are the perpetrators. An unlikely friendship, then romance, blossoms when she returns his phone to him. No one around them thinks it’s a good idea. Her family are in the police force; his family “doesn’t do police”. Occasional humour (“it’s true, Protestants really do taste of Jaffa Cakes”) offers some relief from the grim reality: a ceasefire does not erase trauma.
Divin, whose day job is in community peace-building, succeeds in blending a call for empathy with a compelling, engaging narrative.
