Reality Boy, by A. S. King

Reality Boy is the story of Gerald. When Gerald was five, his mum wrote to a TV company inviting the Network Nanny to come and work her nanny magic on Gerald and his two sisters.  Five year old Gerald did not respond well to this home invasion. Five year old Gerald’s behaviour took a nose dive, creating a name for himself that would follow him around for at least the rest of his formative years. ‘Formative years’ being the important part of that sentence. It is a not a nickname that should follow any person, particularly not through their formative years.

Today, Gerald spends a lot of time feeling angry. Everyone says he’ll wind up in prison. Everyone expects the worst from him. Problem is, when everyone expects the worst of you, it’s very hard to not fulfill their expectations. And if they only ever see the bad in your actions, what’s the point in even trying to be good? Fortunately Gerald is intelligent enough – much more intelligent than most people he’s surrounded by give him credit for – to see that he is better than other people think he is. The struggle is in trying to get everyone else to acknowledge that. Which is nigh-on impossible when you have a family like Gerald has. His oldest sister Tasha is psychopathic, but everyone (except Gerald, who knows better) pretends that’s she perfectly normal. His other sister got out as soon as she could and hasn’t called since. His mum is in a particular sort of denial that is essentially child abuse, while his dad buries his head in the sand. Oh wait, that would be alcohol-infused sand.

Gerald needs to find a way out and a way out now if has any hope of becoming a normally functioning adult. Can he move out? Can he run away? Can he wait and apply for college? In the meantime, the only means of escape that Gerald has is into his head. When things get tricky he takes a quick vacation to Gersday. Here the roads are made of candy, he gets to go to Disney World, eat ice cream whenever he wants and – most importantly – not only is there no Tasha, but everyone respects him. But just as the Network Nanny show was not real, neither is Gersday. The Network Nanny show showed only the parts of Gerald’s household that could create a TV sensation, not what was really going on. Gerald wants everyone to realize that five-year-old Gerald, the Gerald that spawned that nickname, isn’t real, but as he spirals his way through the next few weeks, who is the real Gerald? And what, for Gerald, is the real world? Is his reality the one where his sister repeatedly tries to drown him while his mother laughs from the sidelines, the one where the roads are made of candy, the one where he can run away and join the circus?

A. S. King is an exemplary writer and has built in Gerald a painfully sad and frustrated character predominantly surrounded by people who are blinded to the realities of his world. But perhaps Gerald is so wrapped up in his anger and frustration that he’s unable to see the realities of other people’s worlds? King has taken one idea, one concept – the destructiveness and unreality of reality TV – and entwined them into a multi-stranded, multi-conceptual gift of a novel that had me screaming inside over the willful ignorance of Gerald’s family. She effortlessly slips between realities, from Gerald’s ‘now’, to the Network Nanny days, to Gersday, taking us with her and with Gerald one hundred percent of the time. Can he, will he, find a way out? What will the consequences be?

A. S. King is as good as John Green and David Levithan - two writers whose fame in the UK has grown exponentially in the last year - and I really hope her UK sales will grow as fast as theirs have. This will hopefully be helped by the excellent gender-neutral cover that her publishers (Little, Brown and Company) have designed for Reality Boy, a book that is so readable you may forget to eat or sleep. Set your alarm clock to remind you to surface for a taste of your own reality on the odd occasion. But only on the odd occasion.

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?

Urgle, by Meaghan McIsaac

What happens when everything you’ve ever known and believed in gets turned on its head? What happens when you come face to face with the group of people you’ve always been taught to hate? What happens if you can’t save the one person you’d do anything – anything – for?

The Ikkuma Pit is a harsh place to live in, a volcanic hot-pot with a sky of smoke and steam, a place where one wrong step could end your life. But for Urgle and his brothers, like the brothers before them and the brothers before them, right back to the time of Rawley, the Pit is their home, the only place they have ever known. Each boy is left at the edge by their heartless Mothers when they are born, to be taken in and looked after by a Big Brother, until the time when the Big Brother leaves. Everyone must leave to make room for the new, but no-one knows what lies beyond the Pit’s walls.

But this is all about to change: against the odds, a Brother has returned. He brings with him unwitting devastation and the strange yellowish creatures that pursue the Brother are just the first in a multitude of new experiences thrust upon Urgle. For when these creatures, Tunrar Goblins, can’t reach who they want, they take the next best thing: Cubby, Urgle’s Little Brother. Without thought or hesitation, Urgle leaves the Pit and everything he’s ever known to find Cubby, to save his Little Brother and bring him home. It's a race for his life, for Cubby's, and perhaps even for every Ikkuma Brother.

Right from the beginning, Urgle reminded me of Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go – the themes are similar, as is the sense behind the words and the story. I can see similarities between the storylines too, though actually Urgle’s world is very different to Ness’s. When Urgle leaves the Pit, all the things he’s taken for granted are pulled out from under his feet. There’s the basic stuff like the fact that he’s never experienced full sunshine before, never seen an old person, never had to barter for food or goods, never heard of such a thing as a soldier. But there is bigger stuff too, things he never imagined he’d have to face or to consider, like the fact that maybe the tale of Rawley and the Mothers isn’t the whole story. But who can he believe, who can he trust to tell him the truth?

Meaghan McIsaac has written a mind-blowing and outstanding adventure. This is where fantasy excels: the creation of another world to get us to think about life’s bigger questions. It made me think again of Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave (which was first introduced to me by A S King in Ask the Passengers): “People chained in a cave are only able to see a wall. The wall has shadows cast from a fire they can’t see. They guess at what the shadows are. Their entire reality becomes these shadows.” (Ask the Passengers, pg. 111). Urgle and his brothers have grown up in a Socratic Cave, knowing only what is passed down to them from their older Brothers. They can interpret the events of their past and their existence only according to this basic knowledge, but of course the information they have is severely limited and full of holes. How will Urgle react when new information comes to light? Will he ignore it, deny it, incorporate it into his known reality, or have to completely rebuild his reality from scratch?

When he leaves the Pit, Urgle finds himself caught between two worlds and in the middle of an age-old battle, the story of Belphoebe and Ardigund. Thrown from pillar to post and manipulated by both sides, he must face some really difficult choices, life and death, and figure out which path to take. He doesn’t always make the best choices, though, so the question is, will he take the right one in the end? And which is the right one?

The Universe Versus Alex Woods, by Gavin Extence

The Universe Versus Alex Woods starts at the end of the story: Alex, seventeen years old, finds himself stopped at Dover’s customs as he re-enters the UK, suffering some sort of seizure, with a large quantity of cash, a large quantity of marijuana, and an urn of ashes on the seat next to him. Why are the border authorities looking for him? What, exactly, are his perfectly reasonable explanations for the goods he is carrying? Where has he been and how did he wind up here?

As author Gavin Extence rewinds back to the beginning of the story, we follow Alex from the age of ten and a freak accident that seemingly sets things in motion, through his teenage years and up to present day. It’s probable that, accident or not, he would still have been bullied when he made it to secondary school, but whether he would still have been chased down the lanes of his country village on the particular day and in the particular direction that he was is more questionable. Without that particular day, would he have met Mr. Peterson? And without Mr. Peterson, he certainly wouldn’t be sitting in this particular police station right now.

There are many different things discussed in the pages of this book - things to make you philosophical, things to make you irate, things to make you think. It’s quite a philosophical book overall, actually, although it takes a while to get where it’s ultimately going - for instance, there is really no indication at all during much of the book of the big question Extence really wants to ask. In fact, with this thought in mind, perhaps Extence didn’t set out to ask his Big Question at all; perhaps that is just where the story took him. I think not, though; I think he knew where he was going, and he just took his sweet time to get there. It didn’t drag as such; I simply couldn’t see where it was going, which made me doubt the coherence of the story - but about two thirds of the way through I had that ‘aha!’ moment and everything began to fall into place. And with this in mind, I can see now that The Universe Versus Alex Woods is as brave a story as it’s protagonist is (and that’s pretty brave - Alex always sticks to his guns).

There are meteors and meteorites, neurological details and astrophysical discussions, a visit to The Natural History Museum, a visit to CERN, strange girls and strange mothers, and a rather unusual bookclub. I have to wonder what sort of school experience Extence himself had - or suffered - as Alex philosophises on the ignorance of his school’s practices, not least the way in which they teach only what is necessary to pass his exams, and how he is the one punished following a particularly nasty bullying incident - a punishment that results purely from the fact that Alex decides enough is enough and stands up for himself. The swear word he uses during this ‘showdown’ sparks a debate across several pages: which side will you be on? Alex’s or everyone else’s?

And it’s rather cleverly written because everything that occurs in these earlier chapters are a foreshadowing of what will happen later: the school is a small version of the law that Alex will have to face at the end of his story; the gossiping village is a small version of the media; the incident with Mr. Peterson’s dog is a small version of the Big Question Alex will ultimately have to face. This is a subtle and well-considered type of storytelling often seen in films: introduce the big idea in a small way so when the main story comes to the fore it’s easier for the viewer/reader to accept. Excellently done on Extence’s part.

And when the s**t hits the fan, it’s impossible not to be on Alex’s side, even though it’s nearly as hard not to question some of his responses to the things the Universe throws at him. The people around him made me feel irate and impassioned, and the media furore resulting from his actions - how they twist everything around, take all the facts and make them into something else - reminds me of the recent Hilary Mantel/Duchess of Cambridge ‘scandal’ as well as an idea I recently read of in another book, Ask the Passengers by A S King, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In this, Socrates describes a group of people who lived all their lives chained facing the blank wall of a cave; the wall has shadows cast from a fire they can’t see. As they guess at what the shadows are, the shadows become their entire reality - they know only their interpretation of the shadows, and would not recognise or understand what actually causes the shadows, or even the concept of something being a shadow in the first place. Deep stuff.

So is this what Alex Woods is all about? Well, yes and no. I guess, the Big Question aside, it’s about questioning your reality and not accepting what other people lay down for you - sometimes you have to, sure, but sometimes it’s just as important to understand that, often, there’s more to reality than what meets the eye.

Ask the Passengers, by A S King

After a great deal of mental resistance, I recently joined twitter (follow me @bookythought), and one of the first twitter feeds I looked at was John Green’s, on which he had posted the following comment: “People kept telling me @as_king's books are kinda like mine, but having read ASK THE PASSENGERS, I can report that in fact hers are better.” Which seemed like as good a recommendation as any.

Why oh why have I never heard of A S King before?

Ask the Passengers tells the story of Astrid Jones, a regular teenage girl growing up in a small American town, but with a secret. Actually, that’s not true, it’s not a secret. Rather, she’s in the process of figuring out who she is and who she wants to be, and her secret isn’t a secret because she’s not even sure if it’s true yet or not. She needs to reach a certain point of acceptance about it before the rest of the world should get a look in; this is, after all, her life and her feelings. The secret? She’s falling in love with a girl.

Astrid is smart and sensitive and she knows her own mind. She knows the difference between right and wrong; she knows how it feels to be pushed into things she doesn’t think are right and to do things she doesn’t want to do. She’s just trying to stand up for herself, but everyone else seems to think their expectations should come first. This is why, when she needs to escape the construct of her world, she sends her love to the passengers on the planes that fly overhead – she has so much love to give, but no-one else, right now, to give it to.

In a very John Green-esque way, King has intertwined a raft of interesting ideas through Astrid’s story, particularly that of the Socratic paradox, an idea introduced through Astrid’s humanities class, along with Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave and, as the ending draws near, the concepts of perfection and perception. Of the Socratic paradox - ethical constructs that seem to conflict with common sense - Astrid says,

“The only way to disprove something that defies common sense is to ask why. Why would people desire evil? Why are people evil? Don’t they think they are doing good from their perspective? What is evil then, anyway? That’s exactly the type of thing Socrates was after. Making people think so they could find the truth.” (pg. 85)

And this is what Astrid wants too: to make people think. She wants to challenge the things that might otherwise be accepted as a given; she doesn’t want to put a label on herself, and why should she? Especially when it’s only others who will use that label; especially in a town where everyone likes to know everyone else’s business. What does it mean if she gay? Why does it have to mean something big, something groundbreaking? Why can’t it simply mean that she’s fallen in love?

It’s true that King’s writing has a similar feel to John Green, as do a whole raft of contemporary American authors who are just starting to trickle through to the UK book-waters (David Levithan, Maureen Johnson, to name just two). Is she better? I don’t think you can say that any one of these authors is better than the others; rather, they each have a way of writing and tapping into the inner conscious in a way that British authors don’t quite match – it seems to be a style that is currently unique to the American culture, which is perhaps why it feels so fresh and exciting when these wonderful books arrive on British bookshelves. It’s like the teen version of ‘The Great American Novel’. And it turns out that King is a Printz Honor author, a prize that’s the rough US equivalent of the UK’s Carnegie Medal. Mental note: must read other Printz Honor authors.

King and Astrid together achieve what they set out to do: make people think; make readers think. And it’s achieved in a really beautiful way. It’s a story that is almost poetic; it flows and undulates, full of both hard edges and soft corners for the reader to work their around. Astrid’s family consists of a permanently stoned father, a hyper-intense mother, and a little sister who is desperate to fit in. Their behavior toward her, particularly her mother, is hideously caged and resistant. Following a particular incident about half way through the book, Astrid’s parents ask her if she is gay, but Astrid is unable to answer – not because she’s afraid of saying that word, but because she simply doesn’t know the answer yet. Instead of listening and being supportive, her mother’s response is, why are you doing this to us? Why are you lying? It riled me, made me want to get up on my soapbox, to support Astrid, to feel for her in a million different ways.

As other people’s words and stories and actions get blown out of proportion like Chinese whispers, all of a sudden Astrid is the bad guy in the room. Everyone wants someone to blame for the fact that – *shock, horror* – there are gay people in the town. And in this small-town world, Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave  seems even more relevant:

“People chained in a cave are only able to see a wall. The wall has shadows cast from a fire they can’t see. They guess at what the shadows are. Their entire reality becomes these shadows.” (pg. 111)

People only see what they want to see, or what they think they know. It’s an almost impossible ask, sometimes, to get them to consider a new reality. Ultimately, I don’t think Astrid quite gets her parents to understand the new reality she is trying to present to them: that you don’t have to be one thing or the other. But she does find her own way around the mine, a way to be herself and to get them to accept her. She uses a label whilst simultaneously turning that label on its head, which is just brilliant.

Ask the Passengers is wonderful reading, compulsive and thoughtful, and I found myself sitting up until two in the morning reading, simply because I could not put the book down. And then the next day I went out and ordered King’s Everybody Sees the Ants, because I want to hear more of what this author has to say about the world.