The Twelve

UK writer Liz Hyder's YA novel, The Twelve, was recommended by my book group friend, Cathy, who guessed correctly that it would be right up my alley. The blurbs all over the cover talk about Alan Garner and Susan Cooper, which is a signal to parents of my generation rather than a recommendation to young readers themselves these days, I would think. The Twelve certainly has strong echoes of both authors, but notably it's written in a much more modern style -- present tense, first person narration, without which apparently no contemporary young person will pick up a book (what a fuddy duddy I sound like...)

Kit is about fifteen, staying in a caravan over Christmas with her eleven year old sister Libby and her mother. The Christmas timing and the twelve mysterious Watchers harks back to Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, and there are shades of early Alan Garner in Kit and her new friend Story's pursuit of the vanished Libby into the distant past and their battle against a dark enemy. There are lovely invocations of the teeming wildlife in the largely unpeopled historic times that Kit and Story visit: birds, insects, fish and mammals everywhere (I should add the novel is itself set in historic times, in 1999, though I have trouble thinking of a mere twenty five years ago as being historical fiction!)

I really enjoyed The Twelve, and I hope young readers thirsty for fantastical novels strong on landscape and character will relish it as much as I did.