The Wall, by William Sutcliffe

Hands up if you like dystopia books. Hands up if you think dystopia books are important, fictional methods of pointing out inconsistencies in social order and social thinking. Or if you think they are a way of extrapolating a political idea into a worst-case scenario.

Hands up if you think dystopias don’t exist today. Right now, right here, in our modern world.

The Wall, in its basic form, is a literary dystopia. Joshua lives on one side of the Wall, relatively privileged, plenty of food on the table, nice clothes, a room full of books and games. Joshua’s world is under constant threat, though, from The Enemy. They want to bomb Joshua, his people, his town Amarias. They want to steal Amarias’s land. They want to shoot and kill. This is why the Wall is there: to protect Amarias, to keep the Enemy at bay, controlled.

To Joshua, the Enemy are a faceless people, a people to be kept at arm's length. But when he discovers a hidden tunnel that runs underneath the Wall and through to the other side, his inquisitiveness gets the better of him. And what happens when he emerges on the other side will not only re-align his world, but set into motion a series of terrible consequences.

After he goes through the tunnel and gets a glimpse of the other side – even though it’s a terrifying experience for him – his perfect, newly built town, with it’s identical houses and clean streets, seems unreal to him, like a dream, after the vibrancy and dirt and muddle and emotional tensions of the other side. He starts to wonder: why are they the enemy? Why do they hate his side of the wall? And he makes a friend, to whom he feels a debt of gratitude, though every attempt to repay it seems to make things progressively worse, both within his own life and within theirs. How can he fix it? How can he escape it?

The truth behind this dystopia is that it is not entirely fictional. William Sutcliffe has based his story – a fictional town, a fictional boy, a fictional series of events – on the real life, present day happenings in the West Bank. Although it is never explicitly written in The Wall, Joshua is Jewish, an Israeli, those on the other side of the Wall, Palestinian. Sutcliffe (who describes himself as a Jewish atheist)  has drawn on elements of various settlements on the West Bank to create this emotional and thought-provoking portrayal of the situation in Israel in which the Jewish settlers of the Occupied Zone are not-so-quietly condemned by his pen.

It’s an excellent book that, for someone who knows very little about the history and political situation of Israel, was extremely thought-provoking. It would have been useful if Sutcliffe had written a factual summary of the situation at the end of the book to give readers a little extra insight, though he does provide some suggested further reading.

Joshua is a well-rounded character who it’s impossible not to feel for. He makes mistakes – some of which have huge consequences – though the decisions he takes have only good intentions behind them, and it’s kind of excruciating and frustrating to watch events unfold yet be powerless to stop or change them. The willful ignorance of his mother as his stepfather Liev physically abuses Joshua is not unusual in young adult fiction yet is a poignant metaphor, perhaps, for the way in which the western world seems to stand idly by while a whole people is forced into a similar position and held there against their will.

The unerring belief of Liev (and, presumably, the majority of those living in Amarias) in their right to this piece of land reminded me strongly of the book I read just before this one: Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper, which covers the settling of America and practical genocide of the native people there. If I understand correctly, there is a historical precedent for Jewish people belonging to the land which is now called Israel? Which obviously isn’t the case for the whites going in and taking over America, yet surely today the Palestinians have as much connection to the land of the country Israel as perhaps the Israelis do, after farming it and living on it for generations.

Sutcliffe creates this feeling of history through Joshua’s own newly-discovered connection to the land after he begins caretaking an olive grove on the outskirts of Amarias:

“I sometimes think of all the people who might have drunk here. For the last few months it was perhaps only me and Leila’s father, but a hundred years, a thousand years, five thousand years, is the blink of an eye to a leaky rock. Drinking from this spring I feel myself joining a thread of people, linked together through unimaginable chasms of time, who have all knelt here, drunk here, tasted this taste, enjoyed it, been kept alive by it. If the bulldozers ever get here, that will be it. The rock will shift, the trickle will stop, the thread will snap.”

It is irrelevant to Joshua who those people were who have drunk from this spring, tended these olive trees, this soil – irrelevant whether they are Jewish or Christian or Muslim – the land connects us all together if we respect it and it will treat us well if we treat it well. The land doesn’t care who we are, and there is something beautiful in this idea. Why can’t we share it and live on it equally? Why do we have to own it and war over it and diminish others for it?

This is a very complicated history which engenders very complicated feelings. The Wall, though, takes one step towards making us think harder about what we do and how we behave. It’s a very clever idea, to create a dystopian story based on real happenings, though there is a precedent with books such as George Orwell's Animal Farm. Joshua’s actions will change him forever; what he learns, once he learns it, will be forevermore un-learnable:

“This place no longer seems how it was before we left for the Occupied Zone, because back then I barely even knew what The Zone was, and once you know something, you can never unknow it.  

“I have left Amarias, but now I realize Amarias will never leave me. I hated that place because it felt like a huge lie, but this place doesn’t feel so different.”

Poignant and sad and thought-provoking. Who is the real enemy? Liev? The world? Himself? And what sacrifices will he make to do the right thing, to help someone who needs help?

The Child's Elephant, by Rachel Campbell-Johnston

Bat lives in the village of Jambula. He spends his days herding his small band of cattle, running errands for his grandmother, playing wrestling games with the other village boys in the evenings. One day, out with his cattle, he and his friend Muka find Meya, a baby elephant, orphaned by poachers, collapsed and starving in the scrub.

Meya is welcomed into village life, for elephants are considered a sacred animal - close to humans in the way they form friendships and families and loyalties, but close to the spirits too – and she is everything to Bat: constant friend and companion, as he helps raise her and feed her and she joins him out on the savannah with his cattle. It’s a hard life, but an idyllic sort of one too, with few concerns but the next day and the turning of the seasons.

Except soon rumours of a terrible child army reach the village, tales of refugees and roads not being safe to travel. And when Lobo returns to Jambula, the cruel son of the medicine woman, a boy who knows only how to boast and bully, he is fascinated and intrigued by Bat and his relationship with Meya. Does he want Meya for his own? What will he do if he can’t get her?

The Child’s Elephant is a story of friendship and survival and hope. Bat and Muka’s world will soon be turned upside down, their minds and bodies pushed to the very limits, but friendship, a belief in what is right and wrong and – most importantly – hope, will help them to survive.

Rachel Campbell-Johnston seamlessly combines a tale of quiet village life, an edgy co-existence with African wildlife, with the brutality and fear and the ravaging of communities exhorted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army as, from a caring wildlife tale we are transported with Bat and Muka to a brutal training camp. Here, Bat is coerced into a place where he must betray those whom he holds most dear, the terrible choice of Muka or Meya. How can he choose? What can he do? And when they make a run for it, it seems that all will be against them: the people, the land, the season. Will they ever find home again? What will they have to sacrifice along the way?

This a very accomplished young novel, the balance between the wildlife and the African plains and the all-encompassing forests of the army perfectly rendered. There are some potentially difficult scenes: Bat’s encounter with the poachers in the opening chapter, his and Muka’s capture by the rebels, the brutality of the camp, their friend Gulu’s tale of his own capture. But Campbell-Johnston writes them with the utmost care, keeping me on the edge of my seat, but without unnecessary angst. And she summons Bat’s life to the page wonderfully: the sights and sounds of the land around him, the link between him and Meya, his cares and concerns, the changes that are wrought upon him.

Several years are covered during the book, both quiet ones and difficult ones, but there’s not a dull moment and everything that takes place does so for a reason; everything will be called upon again in later chapters, will take Bat and Muka on their journey forward into adulthood. It is sad and wonderful all at once, but their care for the world around them and their friendships with Meya, with Gulu, and with each other, will see them through and into the future. Suitable for middle grade readers, I can see why The Child’s Elephant has been chosen for the 2014 Carnegie Medal shortlist; it would be a good step up particularly for anyone who likes Michael Morpurgo, or Lauren St John’s African Adventures series.

All the Truth That's in Me, by Julie Berry

All the Truth That’s in Me is a really extraordinary novel. It’s immensely readable yet quietly intense, a story of communication and love and judgement, and with one of the most unusual but remarkable voices I’ve ever come across, written sort of simultaneously in first and second perspective (‘I’ as well as ‘you’).

It is four years since Judith was abducted, two years since she returned. She cannot speak, half her tongue cut out, and so she cannot tell the town, her mother, her younger brother, what happened to her. She can only watch you, Lucas - the man she’s loved since you were a boy - from a distance and silently pour out her thoughts and fears and dreams.

This is Roswell Station, a settler’s town heavily ruled by the laws of God; it’s a tight community, but one that can easily be shattered. And when three Homelander ships are spied on the horizon, the glass looks set to break: since the fire, there isn’t enough arsenal to properly defend against these raiders. But as the men and boys are summoned to war, Judith remembers: the hut hidden in the hills, the basement where she was kept, the explosives stacked like a wall. And so she does the one thing she never thought she’d do: she returns and makes a bargain: her life for yours.

But this is only the beginning. Because when Judith’s kidnapper reveals himself to the town, a set of events is begun that she could never have predicted, events that dig up the past and shed new light on things people thought they understood. Gradually, in more ways than one, Judith regains her voice. And as Lucas begins to notice, so the town notices him. Conclusions are drawn, traps are set and just as a happy ending seems to be within reach it is snatched away again. Or is it? Can Judith find a way to turn the town’s judgment around?

I really can’t even begin to do justice to this book. It’s a romance and a mystery, the story of a town and of a girl, it’s empowering and tense. It’s written in a timeless sort of way that suggests 17th or 18th century, but reminded me most strongly of the M. Night Shyamalan film, The Village, I think because of the level of purity expected by Roswell Station’s citizens, because the worship, although it runs through the town’s veins like blood, is mostly unspecified.

Julie Berry’s technique of writing in both first and second perspective is something I've never come across before; it's both extremely daring and extremely effective. Additionally, her style of breaking up the four ‘books’ into multiple small chapters makes it exceedingly readable, especially as you just have to find out what will happen next; and the language, the plot building, the characterisation - the everything - is exquisite.

Of all the excellent books on this year's Carnegie Medal shortlist (I’ve currently read five of the eight), this is, so far, the standout title for me. It’s quiet yet has great intent, an amazing voice, every page and twist of the plot explosive; I had no idea how it was going to end, whether things would work or whether the town’s judgments and assumptions would override their humanity. For anyone who thinks that young adult books are all trash, all they need to do is pick up All the Truth That’s in Me.

Will Lucas see Judith? Why does her mother hate her so? What nasty game is teacher Rupert Gillis playing? Who is following Judith, prowling around her house at night? And, perhaps most importantly of all, what really happened to the other missing girl, Lottie? Judith must reclaim her voice, and reclaim what was lost to her and what was lost to you. Truly excellent.