UNDER WATER by Marisa Reichardt, reviewed by Pauline Francis

I chose this debut novel because of this sentence on the front cover: “Sometimes the safest place to be is underwater.” I was intrigued because I really don't like water at all. The hard cover on the right is even more disturbing to me, so I've shown you both.

Morgan is seventeen, lives in California and used to be a great swimmer, until a terrible event at school made her afraid to leave her apartment.

Sadly, we’ve become used to reading about school massacres, even used to reading about yet another loner who has taken revenge on his rejecting world. Reinhardt takes us in into new territory: what happens to the survivors? How do they recover from their trauma? Life can never be the same again, so how does a young person grow into a new one? Morgan is such a survivor. We know this early on. The tension lies in not knowing exactly what happened to her.

This novel skilfully and slowly takes us into Morgan’s mind as it is written in a very sparing present tense and first person, like a mental diary. Just when the reader is beginning to get the measure of her and her progress, thanks to her therapist, Brenda, a new thread of the trauma floats to the surface. The reader is constantly asking, ‘Is she going to get over this?’

Morgan begins her recovery when a new boy moves in next door. But this isn’t a love-cures-all novel. It’s much more subtle than that. The boy, Evan, connects Morgan to the world outside that she misses and wants to return to. And Reinhardt takes pains to point out that Morgan has to do the hard work every day, reading the mantra stuck onto the kitchen wall:  

1. Breathe 2. You’re are OK. 3. You’re not dying.

Nobody can get better for her.

“’Are you proud of yourself? Brenda asks.

‘I guess.’

‘I want you to own it, Morgan.’

‘Yes.’”

I very much liked the introduction of Morgan’s car, a classic (1957) matador-red Bel Air, left to her by her grandfather. It’s a strong character and adds a dark twist to the day of the massacre, to Morgan’s final revelation.

I did find Morgan’s family situation depressing: her father suffers from war-related mental health problems; some might say it is unnecessary, as are Evan’s own family issues. But as forgiveness and acceptance are at the heart of this novel, Morgan has to forgive her father as well as the loner who carries out the massacre.

This is an honest and gutsy novel that I would recommend far and wide – to anybody suffering the trauma of physical and mental abuse - and to their teachers, parents, carers and counsellors.

Pauline Francis www.paulinefrancis.co.uk

Return to REVIEWS HOMEPAGE

0.4 by Mike Lancaster Reviewed by Adèle Geras

Mary Hoffman on her blog, THE BOOK MAVEN, quotes Julia Eccleshare at the London Book Fair saying this: "Big successes drive underground books we know are better." That struck me as so true and so apposite to lots of books I could name that I decided to write about this one.
Newspapers and websites and social networking sites are crowded with noise about such things as the HUNGER GAMES trilogy. There are flashy dystopias and science fiction books tied into films all over the place. This book has found its way, through the votes of young people in Lancashire, onto a prize shortlist but it's so enjoyable and has come out with so little fanfare (I'd never even seen it before it appeared on the shortlist) that I feel like drawing it to the attention of everyone.
I am not an SF fan and I'm not keen on fantasy either, for the most part, but this book is an accomplished debut novel and something that I'm sure a lot of boys as well as girls would enjoy.It's set in a future time and the whole story is presented as the findings of/research notes of an Editor. This Editor presents the contents of tapes made in the past. The past is our present and in the account given on them, a boy called Kyle Straker tells us what happens on one day when a friend of his hypnotizes four people as an 'act' in a local talent contest. The contest is an annual event taking place in a small Cambridgeshire village. The whole population of the place turns out to the Village Green to watch. Then something happens...
What follows is both scary and convincing and the idea behind this book is so terrific that I'm not going to say a single word about it. Suffice it to say that the title, 0.4, which at first I thought a bit silly and not very memorable, is EXACTLY right for the narrrative. The cover image too, which is hard to look at without squirming or flinching, is precisely true and horrifying.
I for my part was happy not to be snarled up as I often am when reading SF, in stuff I couldn't understand to save my life. It's a pleasure to read something so well, and clearly and modestly written. The novel has a very clever structure and fits together like good clockwork. The characters are believable and Kyle's voice is one that we like and can listen to for the length of the story. Do yourself a favour. If you have a young person of about 12 or older, buy this for them and read it yourself too!
Publisher: EGMONT Format: Paperback Price: £6.99 ISBN: 9781405253048

Return to REVIEWS HOMEPAGE

TWO HISTORICAL NOVELS reviewed by Adèle Geras.

The Young Elizabeth 1: TRAITOR’S KISS by Pauline Francis. Usborne pbk £5.99
ISBN: 9781409527411

In an Author’s Note at the end of this short novel, Pauline Francis writes: “I have exploited Elizabeth’s documented character to the full,” and all the readers who have followed the story of the young Princess through times of great danger will be even more impressed with this book. Francis writes very convincingly in the young Elizabeth’s voice. The book begins with a terrifying situation for the Princess on the morning of January 21st, 1549 and we are then taken back one year, to her fourteenth birthday. In the year that we’re going to live through, we meet villains and heroes, friends and enemies, and over the whole hovers the shade of Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s mother, whom she loves and whose fate she dreads. She says: I was only two when my father, the king, executed my mother, Anne Boleyn. People say she was a witch who stole his heart with her dark enchantments, but I can remember nothing of her. Yet still the malicious rumours of others haunt me. The whole story revolves around the young Elizabeth learning more about her mother and how true the hideous stories about her really are.

We have the advantage of knowing that she escaped Anne Boleyn's fate to become our most charismatic Queen, but still, there is suspense and tension and that’s down to Pauline Francis’s organization of her material. She’s very good at the detail of Elizabeth’s life: her love of pretty things, of perfume, of sweet things and something else that comes across well is the contrast between the opulence and ease of the palaces in which Elizabeth lives and the squalor, stench and poverty of places like Bedlam, which she visits on one memorable May night.

The supporting characters, Elizabeth’s servants, Francis, the boy who fishes corpses from the river but is Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, the horrible Thomas Seymour, Mary, her half-sister and the daughter of Catherine of Aragon and her friend Robert Dudley, come alive in the pages of this book and we can identify with Elizabeth as she negotiates her way through the network of allegiances and enmities of the Royal court.

This is the perfect book for anyone who loves a good historical novel. You can be sure of the facts and the imagination of the writer has made even more exciting a very exciting period. Usborne have published this book most beautifully, and even the young woman on the cover looks as though she might grow up, if not into Elizabeth herself, then at least into Cate Blanchett. They’ve provided a lot of information for budding historians at the back of the book about where they can find out even more about the Virgin Queen. There’s a good bibliography, (which I assume is the author’s) and this will certainly lead some readers on to further study. They might start with RAVEN QUEEN, (Francis’s previous novel and also very good) which is based on the life of Lady Jane Grey. Highly recommended for private reading and a good resource, also, for school bookshelves.



THE COURT PAINTER’S APPRENTICE by Richard Knight. Catnip pbk. £5.99
ISBN: 9781846471278

This has a very intriguing and period-appropriate cover of part of a young man's face. You'd be well-advised to look more closely at the pupil of his eye... I won't say more but it hints at something in the story you're about to read. This concerns Johann who is supernaturally talented and I use the word advisedly. Not only is he gifted as an artist but his brushstrokes can affect the future in mysterious ways. What he depicts often turns out to be true in the end.

Johann is fourteen and working in his father's inn at the beginning of the novel, drawing to amuse himself. Hugo, a master painter of the Painters' Guild in Ghent, sees Johann's work and recognises his talent. Hugo takes the boy under his wing and almost adopts him. Johann goes to live in Hugo's studio and learns his craft there. While he's doing so, we are given some detail of life in Ghent in the 17th century, and also shown round some existing masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, including the Arnolfini Marriage and the Altarpiece in the church of St Bavo.

The kind-hearted apprentice does his best to make the people he paints happy and subtly alters their fates by doing so. Hugo goes blind as he ages and when Johann paints a self portrait he at last learns to heed his master's advice: "Paint what you see, not what you want to see."

The style is plain and spare and the story moves along at a good pace. We're never too weighed down with detail. Perhaps we could have had more development of the various relationships in the novel and the whole thing could have done with being somewhat longer but that's not going to worry any children reading it. A very promising debut and Richard Knight writes well.

Return to REVIEWS HOMEPAGE