Ethan's Voice, by Rachel Carter

Ethan’s Voice is the touching story of a young boy who has become trapped in his own world after he stopped speaking four years ago. His life revolves around mum, dad, and the canal on which he lives. He has no friends, became home schooled after he could no longer stand the teasing at school, and communicates only through nods and shakes of his head.

Why did he stop talking? It’s been so long now that he can’t even remember the reason; all he knows is that not talking is not a choice, it’s a physical act that he can no longer perform. He is too scared even to write things in a notebook. But when Polly moves to the canal Ethan finds in her someone who accepts him for who he is, someone who doesn’t question him or force him or tease him, someone whom he can call friend. And for Polly, Ethan decides that he wants to be able to talk; he wants to be able to ask her questions and be able to tell her things, to make her laugh. But first he must find out why he stopped talking in the first place. Is he brave enough?

This is a gentle story written for 9-12 year-olds, though just as pleasurable and revealing to read as an adult. Ethan is afraid of the world, but as little clues to his past appear, instead of trying to shut them out, to run from them, he tracks them down and faces them head on, no matter how much it scares him. And, when he thinks he has found the truth, what will he do with it? Can he tell? A story about the power of friendship, it’s also a not-so-subtle reminder that children see more than we think they do and while, more often than not, they also understand more than we might think they do, misinterpretation is also dreadfully easy and can have terrible results. Rachel Carter’s book deserves to join the ranks of titles such as Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time for its insight and cross-over potential.

Colin Fischer, by Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz

Colin Fischer is a fourteen year old boy with high functioning Asperger’s Syndrome. He is very smart, has a remarkable ability to absorb information and detail, is interested in everything and anything to do with science and math, but has extreme trouble navigating everyday social circumstances, cannot function in the presence of loud sounds, and really really dislikes being touched. He also has trouble reading other people’s emotions and facial expressions and can’t tell when a question is rhetorical or a comment is sarcastic, instead taking everything as literal. This makes navigating the highways of school rather difficult, and makes him a high priority target for school bullies. But Colin is capable of more than he knows, as he's about to find out.

Colin’s hero is Sherlock Holmes, a character whom the authors, Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz, quietly make a convincing argument toward being on the autistic spectrum himself. And Colin is a Holmes at heart too: he likes to understand how things work and why things are the way they are, which means that whenever a new mystery presents itself, he feels the urge to investigate. A mystery like a gun going off in the school cafeteria one day. Witnessing the event, Colin sees details that others don’t pick up on, and he quickly becomes convinced that the boy the school and the police are blaming for the incident is not actually responsible. Colin puts aside the years of bullying he has suffered at the hands of this child and sets out to prove the boy’s innocence and identify the real perpetrator.

In Colin, Miller and Stentz have created an insightful and likeable character with whom it’s easy to empathise despite his occasional unusual behaviours. While his younger brother is remarkably unfeeling (though the writers make it clear that he’s stuck somewhat between a rock and a hard place), the boys’ parents are well-attuned to Colin’s anomalies. They are rather super-parenty though: a mum who simultaneously holds a rocket science meeting, folds laundry and looks after her Asperger’s son? This sounds distinctly unrealistic to me. However, the main part of Colin’s story is fun and informative, and written in a manner that taps into Colin’s character extremely well, with notes he makes in his precious Notebook scattered through the text, and, here and there, a footnote with interesting facts that blend both actual fact and a touch of Colin, thus keeping it light, interesting and amusing at the same time.

If Colin’s parents are unrealistic overachievers, Colin’s school sounds typically American and well-balanced. An early encounter between Colin and his new PE teacher had me fuming (granted, I have a rather poor personal history with PE teachers, so was somewhat biased), but then the teacher’s ‘no s**t’  yet subtly thoughtful attitude morphed into being a really positive thing for Colin. There are lots of quiet truths mixed into this book, from the good teachers and the bad teachers to Colin’s accounting of the Kuleshov effect, and his attempt to create a map of the social structure of the high school. It all flows together rather nicely.

Colin’s Asperger’s status and his determination to solve the mystery of the gun has drawn comparisons among reviewers with Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is understandable, but really they are two quite different books. Haddon is in a different league to Colin Fischer, but, that said, Fischer is a good read, enjoyable and with a simple but well thought out plot. For some reason Waterstones have classed this as suitable for the 9-12 age bracket, but it is really too grown-up for those readers I think, mainly because of one or two sexual references contained within. However, it serves as a good introduction to teenage fiction, is amusing and, as said before, quite insightful into Asperger’s Syndrome, thus also serving well as a pre-cursor to reading Mark Haddon. At it’s heart this is a book about friendship, making friends, being true to yourself, and finding your own unique place on the social ladder, and worth reading.

Turf, by John Lucas

The opening paragraph to John Lucas’ astounding novel of teen gangland warfare, Turf, says it all.

“When you’re fifteen, everything matters. I’m not just talking about the obvious stuff: what music you like, who your crew is, whatever. I mean everything. All the little details. The way you carry your bag, the way you wear your jeans... The way you cut your hair, the way you wear your hat. Where you cross the road - Traffic lights and zebra crossings are for pussies, bruv - to where you sit on the bus. Your postcode, your estate your, school.” (pg.1)

Jaylon is stuck in as many ways as you can name. He’s stuck on his estate, stuck in a turf war between his gang, the Blake Street Boyz, and the one on the rival estate, the Yoots. He’s stuck on where he gets to live, what his future will be, which friends he gets to make. You could argue this is a choice he made: he chose to join the Boyz, after all; or you could argue that he never had a choice: join the gang or be nothing. And now he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place: it’s time to prove himself and gang leader Shads has named his price. Jay must kill Ram.

And so Turf covers the period of time between Jay getting this instruction and the point at which he must carry it out. Its a scary and poignant snapshot into the life of those at the bottom of the pile, inner city estates and the dynamics of what might seem to me from the outside as petty warfare, but from the inside is life or death. Jaylon commits some terrible crimes and is put in some terrible situations, and it's impossible not to feel heartbroken for him, to not root for him. He so desperately wants to do the right thing, to break away from the place he finds himself in, but he just can’t figure out how.

Turf is intense and dark and not a story to be taken lightly. There is drug use; there is extreme violence. And there is also a surreal sort of edge to it. As Jaylon wanders the streets trying to figure things out, he meets a series of odd people - homeless pothead Leo, an old Rasta, a weird plant woman - who say cryptic things. Are they just the normal street effluvium, or are they something more? Spirit guides? Ghosts? Quietly, Jaylon descends almost into mental breakdown, haunted as he becomes by actions and choices, by these people and their words, and by strange hallucinations that plague him at home. Is it a result of drugs? Of malnourishment? Of stress and indecision?

I wonder whether Turf is a book that would fare better if repackaged for adults - the themes and subject matter, and Lucas’ expert treatment of them, makes it a book that surely deserves a type of accolade that is more likely to come from an adult audience and an adult reading perspective (think The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night-time). This, of course, is not to say that teenaged readers won’t appreciate the content - they will, I am sure - but I don’t picture it getting the recognition it perhaps deserves through a teen audience alone. Repackaging it for adults would give it a wider and well-deserved readership that shelving it in the teenage section alone is likely to enable.

Ultimately, Turf ends the only way it realistically - and morally? - could. As the grafitti on the front cover image says, Jaylon’s is a world where you kill or die. The chances of escape are slim to none; hands down to John Lucas for beating the odds.