SHE IS NOT INVISIBLE by Marcus Sedgwick

Review by Jackie Marchant 

This was shortlisted for the inaugural YA Book Award and, to be honest, I preferred it to the winner, but that’s another story.  There is so much to this book – a great plot, a mystery, a puzzle or two, a dash of thriller and a tough challenge, all bound up with excellent writing.  

It begins with Laureth trying to convince herself that she’s not abducting her seven year old brother, even though she’s at the airport with him and her mother’s credit card.  It takes a while to realise why young Ben is an essential companion as she tries to find out why her father has disappeared in New York when he’s supposed to be in Switzerland.  It’s only towards the end of the first chapter that you realise Laureth is blind.  Even then, it takes her a long time before she quietly confesses to someone.  She doesn’t want to bring attention to herself as she fears they will send her back for travelling with a seven year old. 

What chance does a blind sixteen year old girl have in finding a missing father, when her only aid is a young boy who thinks this is a planned trip to visit him?  But Laureth is resourceful and, despite what she thinks, responsible.  She manages to meet the person who contacted her father to tell him that he’d found his notebook.  As Lauren answers all her father’s fan mail, she now knows that her father is not where he’s supposed to be and, even worse, he’s lost his precious notebook.  Her father is a writer and, as one myself, I know that loss of a notebook is an absolute disaster.  But when Laureth meets up with the person who found it, they are not what they seemed and the mystery only deepens.

Then there is the content of the notebook.  To the reader, lots of quirky notes about coincidence, strange cults and suicides, but to Laureth the frightening truth that her father might be in real danger.  So she goes off to New York with her little brother to find him.  Then the trouble really starts.  But I will say no more as I don’t want to give anything away.

This is not your usual page-turner.  As well as gripping, it is original and quirky, beautifully written, with realistic characters and plausibility.  It’s described as a thriller, but it is so much more than that.

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Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick - review by Dawn Finch

The spiral has existed as long as time has existed.
It's there when a girl walks through the forest, the moist green air clinging to her skin. There centuries later in a pleasant greendale, hiding the treacherous waters of Golden Beck that take Anna, who they call a witch. There on the other side of the world as a mad poet watches the waves and knows the horrors the hide, and far into the future as Keir Bowman realises his destiny.
Each takes their next step in life. None will ever go back to the same place. And so, their journeys begin...

I should declare a bias before you read the rest of this review - I'm a massive fan of Sedgwick's work and have read all of his books and so I was looking forward to reading Ghosts very much. I was aware that it was a different format to his other books and I was looking forward to something new. I was not disappointed.

Ghosts of Heaven is split into four parts; four different stories interconnected by various key elements and a theme inspired by the occurrence of the spiral form. The remarkable thing about these stories is that we are encouraged by the author to read them in any order we like. I read them in the order 4, 1, 3, 2 - and was thrilled to find that the seeds of other stories are sewn in each chapter. It really is extraordinarily accomplished to make all of these stories connect in such a subtle and fluid fashion. I've certainly never read anything like it.

But it's not just clever, it's beautiful too. Each section has its own tone and voice, and is written with Sedgwick's usual deft hand. To be honest I could have read a novel based on each and every story and been wholly satisfied. Each chapter represents a very fine piece of writing alone, and the fact that they curve and spiral around each other is utterly fascinating.

However, it did raise an issue with me that I have often been baffled with. This book is listed as a YA title and yet almost all of the central characters are adults facing adult situations. The two younger characters are based in a time period when there are no "young adults" and so they behave as adults to adult situations. I am often puzzled as to why a book is marketed as YA when it is clearly an adult book. Don't get me wrong - I do think that young adults will love this book, but the type of young adult who will enjoy it will also be the type of reader who is already reading adult books. I feel that by listing it as YA there will be a lot of adults who will remain completely unaware of the existence of this book, and they will miss out. I strongly feel that Sedgwick deserves a much wider audience, and this is perfect example of a wonderful book that might not get into mainstream adult reviews and magazines simply because it's marketed as YA. I genuinely don't understand adults who lock themselves into a place where they don't read YA books. That is a great shame because in this case people are missing out on a remarkable reading experience.

Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick is published by Orion - isbn 9781780621982 - £10.99
On Sedgwick's website you can view the atmospheric trailer.

As of December 2014, Ghosts of Heaven has been  shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards as well as the Bookseller YA Fiction Prize
It has also been listed as a Peters Book of the Year and a Lovereading Book of the Year 2014

review written by Dawn Finch - author of Brotherhood of Shades

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