The River Singers, by Tom Moorhouse

Sylvan, his brother and his two sisters are water voles, river singers, their lives tapped out by the rhythms of the Great River. Sylvan is desperate for adventure, desperate to get out and into the big wild world, and when he steps outside for the first time he’s assailed by new sights and sounds and scents. But the first trip out is also a lesson in the dangers of the world – predators are everywhere and singers must always be alert and careful. This is a warning, too, for what is to come: right from this first trip onto the river bank, there are hints that all is not as it should be in their world – an unusual scent, a missing neighbor, a twist in the river’s song.

So begins the journey of a lifetime for four small voles. When, in the dark of night, tragedy strikes, the singers must make the almost impossible choice to search for a new home. After a dramatic encounter with the treacherous Mistress Valerie that is sure to get youngsters sitting on the edge of their seat, the singers leave their childhoods behind and start to make their way downstream, entering a new world and beginning a new adventure. Through encounters with rats, otters, foxes, mink, and other voles, calm and turbulent waters, will they find a new place for themselves? Will they escape the terror that stalks the riverbank behind them?

The River Singers is being likened by many to Richard Adams' modern classic Watership Down, and I can see where the connections lie, but while it is quite dark and scary in places, The River Singers does not go as far down this route as Watership Down does, forming a comparatively lighter and considerably shorter story that would be perfect for young readers of around 9+. Secondly, a significant undertone in Watership Down is that of human destruction and terror, whilst all the dangers our cute little voles meet in The River Singers are principally sourced from nature. Although, having said that, while the singers never meet humans or come across human constructs, the two main problems the singers face are actually a result of human interference: the introduction to the landscape of American Mink and the reduction of their natural habitat, both of which have contributed to the fact that today the water vole is Britain’s fastest declining wild mammal - as author Tom Moorhouse well knows from his day job at The Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford.

What Moorehouse has achieved with The Rivers Singers is a wonderful animal tale that quietly explores the interconnection of nature without being in any way, shape or form preachy. I loved the connection Sylvan feels with the Great River, which they name Sinethis – he loves to listen to her song, and it’s almost innately understood that she both gives and takes life, depending on her fickle mood.
Each of the four voles are independent characters, though Sylvan and his brother Orris are perhaps more rounded and easier to interpret than the two girls, feisty as the girls are; and each of the other characters we meet are wonderfully individual as well, from the funny speech forms of Fodur the rat, the playful otter, the paranoia of Mistress Marjoram, the openness of Camilla.

This book is smart and witty and faces the realities of life and death head on but without over-analysing them. A pleasure to read. I can picture the cartoon adaptation now: little voles nibbling on stems and reeds, trekking through the foliage alongside a quiet Sinethis, fighting for the surface in her rapids. Sinethis sings to the singers – but what does she sing?

Shaman, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Shaman is breathtaking. For a book that, in it’s most basic interpretation, is about a boy – or young man – growing up in the ice age of 32,000 years ago, following the daily, monthly, and yearly routines from hunting and fishing to shoring up for the winter, it is a compelling and epic piece of storytelling.

A boy by our standards, a man by ancient standards, Loon is twelve at the beginning of the story, and we are introduced to him as he’s sent off by his pack, his family, on his Wander: two weeks alone on the land to fend for himself. He is stripped of everything he owns before being turned out in the cold and the next few days are dedicated not just to gathering together the things he needs to survive, but also evading the danger that constantly lurks outside the safety of camp – the cold, the animals, the Neanderthals. Through Loon’s travels we gradually learn the intricacies of ice-age living: family dynamics, pack dynamics, the turning of the seasons, the interaction of Homo sapiens with Neanderthals and with the animals and land they cohabit, the constant pressure to find food, the shaman’s role.

It’s a strange and fascinating telling; a story that begins as a simple recanting of daily life, but which takes a turn in the middle as events converge and Loon and Thorn, chief shaman of Wolf pack, must make a life or death decision after Loon’s wife is stolen by a pack of ice-cold Northers. What will Loon do? How will his pack respond? Can Loon follow, and if he does, how will he get Elga back? From following the Northers’ tracks north, to a cold cold winter in the shadow of a giant ice shelf, this phase of Loon’s path to Shaman-hood culminates in a dramatic race for life across the tundra, down mountainsides, over raging rivers, and through forests, all the while pursued by howling wolves, angry men and the pangs of hunger while Loon fights with injuries old and new, Thorn with instinct to protect his pack versus the instinct to do right by the spirits. The decisions made here will change everything forever, as his wander changed everything forever, as his marriage changed everything forever.

I am forever fascinated by the lines between science fiction and fiction – why is one author classed as sci-fi while another isn’t? Where does the distinction lie? Kim Stanley Robinson writes the kind of literary books that should be placed alongside ‘mainstream’ authors such as Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, J G Ballard – and Shaman is no exception. Atwood traditionally refers to her more sci-fi-esque fiction as ‘speculative’ rather than sci-fi, which is a very apt description, and this is absolutely the category to which I think Kim Stanley Robinson’s work most closely matches.

I found myself biting back tears in several places. Who were these people really? How much is Robinson’s writing based on imagination, how much on research? Do these exact paintings exist? Shaman is not the first time that an author has recreated ancient times – Jean Auel and Michelle Paver come first to mind – but it still feels unusual and fresh for a science fiction author to turn his powers of world-building away from the future and into the past. Robinson is visionary in the way he builds this world and these characters, from the cold winters to hungry springs to summer eight eight festivals, the snow and the wind, the caribou hunt, the impenetrable blackness of the caves where they paint. This is a tale of life on the edge, life in the extreme, and it’s beautiful.

Dead Man's Cove, by Lauren St John

Laura Marlin dreams of being a detective – just like Matt Walker in her favourite stories. But when she expresses this wish to her new guardian, a long lost uncle, she’s surprised at the vehemence with which this kind man reacts: “Well, that’s about the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” But for Laura, being a detective is what comes naturally, and so she can’t help but question the events and people around her in her new home, St. Ives.

Why is her uncle so secretive? Where does he go at night? What is the deal with her new friend Tariq – where do his mysterious bruises come from? Who is leaving secret notes for Laura in the sand - is their writer really in danger or is it just a prank for the new girl? Why is she forbidden from going to Dead Man’s Cove? And is the nasty housekeeper really who she says she is?

Dead Man’s Cove taps into Cornwall’s smuggling past in a very modern way, creating a wonderful little mystery that romps along, introducing not only a wonderful new heroine for youngsters to engage with but also an evil new nemesis in the form of terrorist gang The Straight As. Can Laura unravel all the strings of the mystery that her life has suddenly become tangled up in? Is being inside a real life detective story all it's cracked up to be? And – even if she can defeat the Straight As and save her friend today, something tells me they’ll be back again, causing more trouble in the future…

Lauren St John writes an engaging adventure mystery that has already captured many young people’s hearts and minds and surely will capture even more in the years to come. Read Dead Man’s Cove if you dare.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post, by Emily Danforth

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is one of the most exquisitely written and outstanding books for young adults I’ve ever read. It’s like an adult book written for teenagers, a book that treats its readers not as ‘older children’ but as mature and intelligent young people. Emotionally charged from beginning to end, it’s a coming of age novel that takes the world of bigotry to task without being preachy; a LGBT novel that is only barely about being LGBT. Rather, it is about figuring out who you are and sticking to your guns no matter what anybody else tries to tell you is right or wrong.

Cameron is almost 12 on the day she kisses a girl for the first time. It’s also the day before her parents die in a tragic car crash and when she’s told the news, her first reaction is to feel relief they’ll never find out about Irene. Her second reaction is to throw up on the bathroom floor. This is the beginning of a chain of events that will follow Cameron through the next four years of her life. A chain of events that, when she’s 15 years old, will cause her guardian, Aunt Ruth, a born again evangelical Christian with some pretty strict views on how a wholesome person should live their life, to pack Cameron off to God’s Promise Christian School and Centre for Healing. A school which deems homosexuality a sin and a sickness, and of which it is their mission to ‘cure’.

We follow Cameron through these four years, witnessing her loss, the friends she makes, the beer she drinks, the summers of swim team and hay rides and prom and building refuge and kissing boys and kissing girls. When Coley comes to town, it’s love at first sight for Cameron. But will Coley ever reciprocate Cameron’s feelings? And what will happen if or when she does?

While The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a story about sexuality, it’s also about far more than that: it’s a story about life and growing up. Her sexuality is simply one of the many different parts that make Cameron who she is, not a single defining factor. Nearly every character is as rich as Emily Danforth’s writing. I wanted to hate Ruth, but she does what she does only because she genuinely believes it to be the right thing, to be her responsibility, which is actually just very sad. And I wanted to hate Reverend Rick, but at the end of the day he’s surely just as confused as the kids he’s trying to change, yet remains true and compassionate at the same time.

Meanwhile, the themes of shame and desire and betrayal weave their way through the different characters and different events, from Cameron’s shame at her reaction to her parents deaths, to Coley’s shame at being ‘found out’, while desire pumps through almost every page – Cameron’s desire for Coley, Jamie’s desire for Cameron, Ruth’s desire to make everything ‘right’ – except, of course that what is right for one person is not necessarily right for another. But shame is something other people make you feel for yourself, for not fitting their personal profile of who you should be. And who’s to say what desire should be? For each and every one of us desire is different. Danforth expresses all of these things and more with what feels like barely any effort at all on her part, and it’s wonderful to read.

As to Cameron’s miseducation, is it the part that leads up to God’s Promise, God’s Promise itself, or the whole caboodle? And what is miseducation anyway? In the context of Cameron Post, at least, I’d say it’s a misnomer, something that is controlled by one person’s perspective, much like everyone is so set on controlling Cameron’s innate being. For Cameron, God’s Promise is her miseducation; as far as Ruth is concerned it’s the time before God’s Promise – but each and every part of it, before, during, and after, goes toward Cameron finding out what she wants and what she’s willing to do to get what she knows is right for her, no matter what box the people around try to fit her into.

Undoubtedly, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is one of the best young adult books I’ve ever read with its clear and strong-willed storytelling; a piece of writing that is just out of this world, with not one word or sentence or idea is out of place. Everyone should read it.

The Skull in the Wood, by Sandra Greaves

Have you ever been somewhere so empty and wild and desolate, it seems like you’re the only person in the whole world? Have you ever been somewhere so old and ancient, it feels like the trees and the rocks around you, the earth beneath your feet, are somehow alive? Breathing and listening and watching you? Welcome to Dartmoor. Welcome to the home of the Gabbleratchet, an ancient evil that sits and waits, biding time until the right people harbouring the right anger and resentment come along and awaken it from its slumber…

When Matt decides to escape the city and his unwanted step father and go to his uncle’s farm on Dartmoor for half term, he doesn’t realize what a simmering bird’s nest of family troubles he’ll be walking into and stirring up. Matt is selfish and bitter and wrapped up in his problems in much the same way that his cousin Tilda is. Everything precious to each of them is going pear-shaped. Tilda blames Matt for the many of the problems in her family, while Matt is incapable of seeing that Tilda’s problems are just as upsetting as his own. This is not a recipe for a happy household. And then they find the skull in the woods.

The skull – a curlew, with its elongated beak and hollow eye sockets – is simultaneously beautiful and creepy, simultaneously drawing the children in and repelling them. They both want possession of it, and it begins to exert a strange sort of power over each of them, pulling them even further in their different enmities. And to top it off, the old farmhand Gabe keeps talking about warning signs, portents, harbingers. But it’s just an old man’s silly tales – right?

The wild moor is the perfect place for this atmospheric tale. And atmospheric it certainly is. Told from the alternating viewpoints of Matt and Tilda, Sandra Greaves builds the tension masterfully, winding in the children’s anger with each other and with the world, hints at family enmity, hints at the old tales of the land on which they’re living, building the emotions – and the creep factor – into an edge-of-the-seat tale. Can the two children outrun this ancient hunt? Can they outrun their owns hurts? Can they step back into Old Scratch Woods, where the gabbleratchet resides, and bury the enmity for good?

The Skull in the Wood is an all-round excellent adventure-type story – though perhaps not for the faint of heart. And what an inspired idea to create a story around an old curse, tales of which amassed through the generations on dark and stormy nights.

13 Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen Johnson

Maureen Johnson is the sort of person that every young adult – and adult too – should look up to, not only for her often hilarious take on life, the universe and everything, but because she is smart and intelligent and is really good at showing people what is right and wrong about the world, frequently reminding us of issues of inequality and injustice that we all should be fighting. Oh, and she’s a pretty good writer too.

13 Little Blue Envelopes tells the tale of Ginny, the legacy that her slightly whack-a-doodle aunt has left her, and Ginny’s version of fulfilling it. In the first envelope, Aunt Peg tells Ginny to buy a ticket to England. In the second are instructions of where to go once she arrives there, which turns out to be the slightly unkempt flat of a slightly ruffled Englishman, Richard. The third envelope leads Ginny to kooky playwright Keith. She can only open an envelope once she’s completed the task set out in the previous one, and as the opened envelopes pile up, Ginny’s adventure gains pace and speed and the days merge together as she moves from a relatively sedate trip to Scotland to a mad dash through Europe that ends in disaster. Or does it?

Along the way Ginny meets new people, gets tangled up in other people’s affairs, sees a million new things, pushes her boundaries, and ultimately learns a bunch of new stuff about her aunt and – both gradually and all in one big rush – begins to come to terms with her grief. There are revelations and kisses, boats and trains, new friends and new family, sunrises and sunsets, twists and turns, rushes and rambles, and a whole lot of art.

13 Little Blue Envelopes is the perfect summery read for younger teens who are either waiting for or are already in the midst of the young flush of first love. It's pacey and quirky and has a hint of the fairytale, especially when it comes to Aunt Peg’s secret tower workroom. It wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping it would be – I didn’t feel that it was as sharp as Sarah Dessen’s books, for example, and I didn’t find it as engaging as Johnson’s more sinister and more sophisticated Shades of London series, but really that just makes it all the more perfect for the slightly younger teen audience. And I’m definitely planning to try The Key to the Golden Firebird, Johnson’s first book to be published, but which has only just become available in the UK. Oh, and The Last Little Blue Envelope too – because obviously I’ve got to find out what happens next...

Severed Heads, Broken Hearts, by Robin Schneider

Ezra Faulkner has a theory: that everyone in their lifetime will encounter a personal tragedy. Something that will change them, something that will make them from one person into another, and after which only the ‘after’ will matter. Ezra, golden boy sports star, whose personal tragedy hits – literally – age seventeen.

Severed Heads, Broken Hearts is the aftermath, Ezra’s story as he comes to terms with his personal tragedy and finds out who he really wants to be. There are old friends and new friends; there are new experiences to try and old experiences to move past; and there is a girl, of course - a girl with her own personal tragedy. But what is it? Why is she hot one minute, cold the next? What is she so afraid of? Can Ezra unlock her aftermath at the same as he tries to figure out his?

Author Robin Schneider is being likened to John Green, and for good reason. Severed Heads is immensely readable and I raced through it no time at all. It doesn’t have quite the same depth as a John Green or A S King novel, but it has the same feel and the same good intentions, making it the perfect recommend for any John Green fan. I am quite tempted to read it a second time, and will definitely be looking out for future books by this author.

And the title? Well, it’s a reference to part of the story inside, obviously, though it’s a slightly unusual choice. Interestingly, in the US it appears this book is called The Beginning of Everything, which is much more clear-cut – I wonder why it’s been changed for the UK audience?

Thursday's Children and Listen to the Nightingale, by Rumer Godden

I grew up reading the wonderful Rumer Godden – special favourites were Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, Little Plum and The Rocking Horse Secret, but until Virago re-released them earlier in the summer, neither my mum nor I had ever come across Thursday’s Children and Listen to the Nightingale, and when they arrived in the Waterstones children’s department where I work they immediately jumped out at me with their beautiful ballerina and ballerina pump patterned covers.

I’ve always loved stories about ballet, something which I think began with the wonderful classic, Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild, another one of those books that I read time and time again, along with just about anything else by her. Thursday’s Children and Listen to the Nightingale fall perfectly into this category of charming children’s stories that just ooze childhood idylls. Exactly why I find these stories so idyllic, I don’t know, especially considering that, really, they are anything but. In both Noel Streatfeild’s books and these by Rumer Godden, life is rarely anything but easy for our protagonists – often they are very poor, living on pennies, and they have to work very hard and make a lot of sacrifices to achieve their dreams. But maybe that is the very reason that I love them: because despite difficult beginnings they always have happy endings.

Thursday’s Children is the story of Doone. Youngest of six children, he was the accidental afterthought following a much-wanted girl child and thus is often ignored or forgotten or dismissed out of hand. Doone’s big sister Crystal is, by contrast, much doted upon and so, because they don’t know what else to do with him, Doone is taken along to watch while Crystal attends her dance class. But Doone is enraptured. By the dance and by the music. He watches and he learns and soon it becomes his dream to be a dancer too. First he just has to convince his mother and his father that he deserves the same chances as Crystal…

In Listen to the Nightingale we follow Lottie. She’s grown up dancing: her mother, before she died, was a dancer and her auntie is the wardrobe mistress at the renowned Holbein Theatre, where Lottie takes her lessons. But when the teaching academy part of Holbein’s must close, Lottie must continue her education at the elite Queen’s Chase, Her Majesty’s Junior Ballet School. Lottie loves the idea of Queen’s Chase, but it’ll mean giving away her beloved puppy, Prince. What will happen to Prince, and what will happen to Lottie as she enters this new world?

Although written about ten years apart, I read these two books one after the other, and it was interesting to note that there are minor crossovers between the two – principally Queen’s Chase and it’s coterie of staff (Doone also attends Queen’s Chase) – which was quite nice, although one character’s role, Ennis Glynn, didn’t quite match up between the two books. And although they were written nearly fifty and sixty years after Noel Streatfeild wrote Ballet Shoes, they certainly have a similar feel – timeless. I honestly couldn’t say what decade either Thursday’s Children or Listen to the Nightingale were intended to be set in, the only allusions to modernity being mention of a television set in Listen to the Nightingale, and the car that Doone’s family owns in Thursday’s Children. Because these children have much greater interests than watching telly and playing video games, and their families automatically travel by bus or underground to save money, that modern life rarely gets a glimpse outside the world of dance and the themes of understanding who you are and your place in the world, and fighting for what you believe in.

Perhaps I love these books because they are a sort of wish fulfillment for me, perhaps because they conjure a world in which everything seems simple (even when it’s not), perhaps because they are just lovely stories. Either way, it makes me want to own every single Noel Streatfeild book ever written and every single Rumer Godden book ever written. And, either way, I suspect I shall still be reading them even when I am 83.

The Bone Season, by Samantha Shannon

The citadel of SciLon, 2059: a London familiar yet strange; a London controlled by Scion for 200 years, pitting 'unnatural' clairvoyants against normal, amaurotic folk. In this world, being clairvoyant is an everyday occurrence, but it’s also illegal, considered a disease, and if you are voyant you have only two choices: to become a pawn of the state, serving in their army for thirty years prior to compulsory execution, or to disappear into the underground and eek out a criminal life on the streets, hiding your true nature as far as you are able.

Paige is a particularly powerful clairvoyant, and she hides herself within the most powerful of the crime-lord gangs, the Seven Seals. But when she is cornered and captured by the state, everything she thought she knew about her world comes crumbling down: Scion is hiding a bigger secret than anyone could have guessed. In a prison she cannot possibly escape, a person named only by number – XX-59-40 - who can Paige trust?

The Bone Season has a little bit of everything – it’s a bit sci-fi, a bit fantasy, a bit dystopian, a bit mystery. Samantha Shannon has created a complex world both just like  ours and yet unrecognizable. She launches us right into the story and Paige’s life and at times, to begin with, it’s hard to follow all the detail, the terms and the divisions that are simply everyday for Paige, but as her story progresses, things are explained, the puzzles pieced together, and I found myself completely hooked. I was totally intrigued by Arcturus, Paige’s Warden in her new life - the mystery of who he is, who his race, the Rephaim, really are, what his intentions are (and yeah, ok, maybe I have a little crush on him too).

While all the pieces of the puzzle do fit together, I’m left feeling that I’m not sure I fully understand the world of Scion. It might be because there are things Paige doesn’t understand, or because Shannon’s imagination hasn’t been interpreted on paper as clearly as it’s present in her head. Paige is a character I got on with really easily, though I did feel frustrated with her here and there – sometimes she grasps information far quicker than I could as a reader, but at other times she seemed a bit slow on the uptake – for instance, even though it was quite clear from the word go that Arcturus was not like other Rephaim, it took a good 200 pages for Paige to get there. Although, credit where credit is due, this was basically because Paige was blinded by her hate, a perfectly respectable character flaw. However, this uncertainty was exacerbated by the fact that the passage of time was rather unclear – the structure of the storytelling made it seem as if only a couple of days had gone by, that Paige had only had one training session with Arcturus to develop her clairvoyancy powers, but it was then implied that several weeks had actually passed, which slightly threw me.

These are minor things though, and didn't detract from the experience of the book - for, while The Bone Season isn’t always as slick as it could be, it is a great new fantasy. I think it probably asks more questions than it answers, and brings ideas to fantasy writing that I haven’t seen before. The Rephaim dose out plenty of detail about their history, but how much of it should Paige believe? What exactly are the Emim? Who are the Scarred Ones? What is freedom worth? And in the land of Scion, can anyone be truly free?

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, by Matthew Quick

Today is Leonard Peacock’s 18th birthday and he has a plan. It’s not the average eighteen-year-old’s birthday plan, though. Leonard has four gifts to give out – he doesn’t expect to receive any himself, he doesn’t expect anyone to remember it’s his birthday – and then he’s going to rid the world of the person whom he hates most, followed shortly thereafter by the person whom he hates the second most: himself.

Right from the opening page, we know that Leonard is in a bad place, the contradictory image of a Nazi handgun and all that it represents placed next to an innocent, neutral bowl of breakfast cereal. Leonard himself takes a mad sort of pleasure in this, feeding on it; Matthew Quick using it to show us the destructive mental place Leonard is in. And then, slowly, like moving through molasses, Leonard moves through his day, distributing his four gifts to the people who have bumped up against his life. Not friends, exactly - not always, anyway – more simply, the people that acknowledge him. An elderly neighbor, an immigrant student, a preacher girl, his history teacher.

As Leonard moves through his day we see how he met these people, how they have or haven’t influenced him, the questions they’ve made him ask, the questions they’ve failed to ask. Strongly reminiscent of Jay Asher’s outstanding novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock is a dark and heartbreaking read. We know what Leonard’s goal is, but is he going to go through with it? Will somebody stop him? And what happens if he gets there? The people he meets during the day question his unusual behavior, but then, for the most part, sweep it aside, just like he has always been swept aside. And what is the terrible secret that Leonard is keeping, that has brought him to this place? What is the hold over him that Asher Beal has?

Matthew Quick writes with the proficiency of John Green and his contemporaries, weaving in undercurrents of ideas that reflect and balance and expand upon the main storyline, whilst implying a deep understanding of what it feels to be at the bottom of the social pile. There is the running theme of the Nazi regime, introduced by Leonard’s handgun and carried through by history teacher Herr Silverman’s lectures and thought-provoking scenarios, from the use of symbols to show power and belonging to the concept of doubling – the ability of humans to behave in seemingly contradictory ways, something which everyone in Leonard’s life, Leonard included, is clearly undertaking. There is the god debate – Leonard’s acquaintance, Lauren, is a fully-fledged god enthusiast; Leonard is not, and the outcome of this match-up inevitably results in more existential queries. There are the Humphrey Bogart quotes, most of which I fear went over my head, having not seen the movies they are referencing. And there are the letters from the future.

The letters from the future are one of two unusual quirks in Quick’s writing. The first letter appears seemingly randomly between two ‘normal’ chapters; it isn’t until later that we're shown where they come from. But, later again in the story, I found myself questioning whether this explanation is true - perhaps the letters really are what they claimed to be in the first place? I would like to think so, for Leonard’s sake anyway, if not for the rest of the world. Only in such well-executed fiction could I accept such an idea, something that in every day life would seem preposterous.

Quick’s second quirk are the sets of footnotes. Footnotes can be good, and can add an extra dimension to a story, but in this case they are my only criticism of Leonard Peacock. There are just too many of them. They broke up the flow of my reading too much and I found myself turning the page with an almost dread, waiting to see what footnotes were going to be there. And the thing with them is, the details would work just as well if they were contained with the main text. After all, you have to interrupt the main text to read the footnote anyway – why not just include it in the main text in the first place?

Quirks aside, reading Leonard is a dark and engaging experience; putting the book down at its end was like dragging myself back up into the daylight. It’s heartrending and unnerving and real, and its lack of any true conclusion is more reflective of life than surely any other ending could be, and makes it even more dark and sad and insightful than the alternatives. Read it and you won't be disappointed.