Bad Behaviour

I was intrigued to read about Rebecca Starford's memoir, Bad Behaviour, on Susan Green's blog (my go-to source for interesting next reads). Starford writes about her year on a rural school campus at fourteen; it's not stated, but it's probably Geelong Grammar's famous Timbertop. Year 9 is a notoriously difficult time for adolescents (though I have heard that Year 8 is the new Year 9). I remember my own Year 9 experience as horribly painful, as friendship groups shifted and I found myself excluded (it all worked out fine in the end).

Bad Behaviour reads like a novel, with memories of events at Silver Creek intercut with reflections of Rebecca's later life, especially her relationships, which were clearly affected by patterns that were set up in that fateful year. I have to say that Silver Creek sounds awful, Starford's experience of it at least. Her dormitory house was ruled by a bully and her clique, who egged on Bec and others to escalating feats of cruel and stupid rule-breaking. It takes a long time for Bec to realise she'd be better off with different friends, and it's hard to comprehend the appeal of the mean girls (I am a steadfast goody-goody, so the glamour of bad behaviour is lost on me). 

Starford writes with compelling immediacy about the ebbs and flows of teen friendship and the weird power that charismatic individuals can wield, though I was less invested in the later relationship dramas of her twenties. Mostly Bad Behaviour made me thankful that I'm not fourteen anymore, and I'd be interested to find out how teenagers would respond to it.

Grace

I bought Grace on impulse from Brotherhood Books because I love Jill Paton Walsh, even though I knew nothing about the book. It's a young adult novel, published in 1991, telling the story of 1830s heroine Grace Darling. I knew the broad outline of her feat -- that Grace, a lighthouse keeper's daughter, had helped to row a boat to rescue survivors from a shipwreck, and became famous enough to have a pub in Collingwood named after her, on the other side of the world -- but no more than that.

Maybe because I had no expectations, I thought Grace was amazing (see what I did there). The first part of the novel faithfully recounts the events of the rescue and what followed: Grace swiftly became a folk heroine, an exemplar of courage and strength which went against Victorian expectations of what a young woman could achieve. In the second part of the novel, Paton Walsh allows herself to imagine more freely the effect of this sudden and overwhelming attention on Grace, who was only twenty two, though she sticks to historical sources where they're available. Grace is showered with gold medals, public concerts raise money for her, she receives thousands of letters and gifts, all of which require a reply. 

The dark side of this fame is something that I had never suspected. An official lifeboat from the mainland also set out to rescue the survivors from the rock, but arrived there just after Grace and her father had plucked them to safety. Though they were equally brave and faced the same violence of sea and storm, lifeboat crews were rewarded according to the number of survivors they saved, and the Darlings had gazumped them. Grace and her father did their best to make sure that the crew were also recognised and paid for their efforts, the avalanche of public attention and money heaped on Grace caused bad feeling in the local town. In Paton Walsh's story, Grace becomes increasingly tormented that she might have performed her brave deed for the sake of the reward, not from pure altruism. Tragically, Grace died from tuberculosis only a few years after the Forfar rescue.

I found Grace a totally engaging ethical and moral examination of fame and courage, and the consequences of celebrity. As Grace herself recognises, it became impossible for her to marry -- she was too rich to be a suitable mate to a simple, ill-educated fisherman, but at the same time, she was too socially lowly to marry a man from a higher station in life. She became famous all over the world, but her fame was a terrible burden from which she could never be free. This was an unexpectedly moving and thought-provoking novel.
 

What Abigail Did That Summer

What Abigail Did That Summer is a novella, less than 200 pages, set during the same time as Foxglove Summer. There's some suggestion that this is a young adult spinoff, designed to draw in younger readers to the Rivers of London series, which makes sense. Our narrator is Abigail Kumara, Peter Grant's thirteen year old cousin, who also has magical abilities and is beginning to be mentored at the Folly. 

There are a lot of reasons why this story might appeal to younger readers -- there are talking foxes! Missing teens (who are all returned unharmed). A sassy, streetwise, smart-mouthed heroine who can summon up river goddesses for advice. And the plot of What Abigail Did is a fair bit milder than most of the Peter Grant novels, which can contain some very dark material. The thing is, I'm not sure that Rivers of London needs a special YA gateway; I'm pretty sure that YA readers are quite capable of discovering and enjoying the regular novels all on their own. And I'm also not sure that Abigail's voice is totally convincing as a thirteen year old Black girl? (I must say that Abigail narrated parts of Stone & Sky and her voice was better handled in that later novel.)

Having said all that, I really enjoyed What Abigail Did, and especially the poignant source of the mystery, which is a house that's kind of come alive and kidnaps teens to act out memorable scenes from its past (shades of Tumbleglass). One aspect of the Rivers of London books I really relish is the awareness and inclusion of history. Those references just sit a tiny bit uneasily in Abigail's mouth, for me.
 

Journey to the River Sea

Journey to the River Sea must be about the last of Eva Ibbotson's books for older readers, and I've been saving it up. It's her most awarded novel, and in many ways it distils all that we love best about her work. Maia is the brave, kind heroine; orphaned Finn is the exotic young love interest; Miss Minton is the stern but loving guardian; the horrid, selfish Carters are unmitigated villains. We are transported to the Amazon in 1910, one of Ibbotson's favourite settings, and again we learn that what makes life worth living is nature, music, kindness, curiosity and books, a message that never gets tired.

I'm glad that of all Ibbotson's books, Journey to the River Sea is one that I decided to buy; it really is one of her best.
 

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.

Maggot Moon

Sally Gardner's Maggot Moon was another acquisition from the Allen & Unwin shelves. It was much awarded when it came out in the UK in 2012, picking up the Carnegie Medal and the Costa Book Award. It's set in an alternate reality, where it seems the Nazis (the 'Motherland') won the Second World War and took over Britain, and now are staging a fake moon landing which fifteen year old Standish discovers.

Gardner, who is herself dyslexic, writes from Standish's viewpoint with mixed metaphors, malapropisms and other confusions of language -- I suspect this feat is what garnered so much admiration from critics. The story is packed with action and danger, and the climax is harrowing. Having said all that, this book was not for me. It's incredibly violent, with one of Standish's classmates being beaten to death by a teacher early in the book. Standish is fifteen, but his comprehension of events seems to come from a much younger child. In fact, that might be my main problem -- the plot and the story are definitely in dystopian YA territory, but the style and the voice seem to me to be pitched at middle grade level. Standish and Hector are close friends, but they build a cardboard rocket together and pretend to fly to the moon, which seems like something a pair of ten year olds might do rather than a couple of adolescent boys.

The chapters are extremely short and punchy, there are striking illustrations throughout, and the whole book seems designed to catch the attention of reluctant boy readers (maybe another reason why it was so highly awarded). But as a whole package, Maggot Moon just doesn't work for me.
 

The Player's Boy and The Players and the Rebels

Here is a real treat! I read these two books of historical fiction together, as Antonia Forest originally intended them to be just one volume; they were split into two by her publisher, Faber. I managed to get hold of the Girls Gone By edition of second part, The Players and the Rebels, a few years ago, but they've only just reissued part one. So I was able to read The Player's Boy for the first time since I left my high school library behind, decades ago. Woo-hoo!

The eponymous player's boy is Nicholas Marlow, an Elizabethan ancestor of the Marlow family of Forest's other books, who runs away from home and ends up joining Will Shakespere's theatre company. As the expert forewords to both volumes make clear, while Forest did lots of research and used the best resources available at the time (the books were published in 1970 and 1971 respectively), Shakespeare scholarship has moved on since her time and some of her conclusions and characters might not agree exactly with current thinking (for example, there is no way that yeoman's son Nicholas and high-born page Humfrey would ever be friends). Still, Forest excels at evoking everyday Elizabethan life and the fascinating detail of the player's life -- some things don't seem to have changed at all. As ever, she is so skilful at showing us rivalry between players, conflicting loyalties, political subtleties, and the real perils of Elizabethan life, from plague to knife fights to execution for heresy.

There are loads of echoes for Marlow fans, or should that be foreshadowing? Nicholas's personality is very similar to modern Nicola's. They are both beautiful but unself-conscious singers and spend time with falcons, though Nicholas's acting skills are more of a nod to Lawrie than her twin. Nicholas and Nicola are both afraid of ghosts and are drawn to the sea. Nicholas hero-worships Sir Walter Ralegh just as Nicola adores Nelson. And there are other references to Forest's other books, like gentle Humfrey who worries about his own lack of courage, just like Peter Marlow. One thing that did pass completely over my head when I read these books at school was the subtle gay content, though it seemed a little implausible that Nicholas, who is 17 or 18 by the end of the story, seems not to be bothered by any sexual yearnings at all!  

I did vividly remember the poignant character of Will Kemp, the company's clown, who finds his improv skills crowded out by increasingly strict scripts. In fact, Kemp seems more like a modern stand-up, creating his own material and responsive to the mood of the crowd. He ends up leaving the troupe, his job pretty much obsolete.

The Rebel part of the story doesn't really come into properly until the last third of the second book, though it's ably set up by what comes before. I think fans of the Elizabethans and of Shakespeare would find a lot to enjoy here, and Will in particular is a most attractive character, kind, dry, level-headed and intelligent, with a hidden melancholy but also wry humour. I really relished making my reacquaintance with these books, and they will join my other Forest volumes in the frequently re-read stack. 

More Than We Can Tell

 

I borrowed Brigid Kemmerer's More Than We Can Tell because it includes a teenager who makes her own online game, but unlike Slay, the online world plays only a relatively minor role in this story. This novel is a kind of sequel to Letters to the Lost, and the characters of Juliet and Declan reappear here. However, the novel centres on a different pair: reclusive, damaged Rev (aka the Grim Reaper, because he's always shrouded in a hoodie) and Emma, torn between her distracted computer geek father and her critical, driven doctor mother.

Emma's game features because she's being harassed by a player called Nightmare; she's also befriended by a supportive player called Ethan (we never discover if they are, in fact, the same person). Her parents' marriage is dissolving, and in the midst of all this, she strikes up a tentative friendship with 'weirdo' Rev. We learn that Rev has many reasons to be weird, mostly connected with his estranged, abusive father. These two defensive characters have to overcome their inner demons to help each other.

I quickly became hooked by More Than We Can Tell. It's a very YA novel; especially early in the book, I felt like shaking both Rev and Emma and urging them to just tell their parents how they were feeling -- it would have saved a lot of drama! But I can imagine adolescent readers gobbling up this tortured romance with a spoon. 

I think I was most horrified to learn about Lucky Charms, allegedly a breakfast cereal, eaten by Rev and his foster brother, which consists of MARSHMALLOWS and 'frosted oats.' It sounds horrific, and definitely not something anyone should eat for breakfast.

Slay

I originally borrowed Brittney Morris's 2019 novel Slay for research into role playing games (more on that later, perhaps), but it actually turned out to be a lively, nuanced story about race and identity. From the first page I was plunged into an unfamiliar Black American culture, which sent me scurrying to the internet for a crash course in terms like twist outs, Hotep and Ebonics.

Our protagonist Kiera has a secret life: after enduring racism in other video games, she has developed and runs a safe online community where thousands of participants duel using cards based on Black culture (skating over how plausible this is for a high school student with a lot of other commitments and a limited budget...) But when one of the players is murdered in real life, (white) people start to ask questions, and Kiera starts questioning herself. Is Slay a safe space, or is it racist and exclusionary? Is it a violent place, or a place of safety and support? Kiera's own vehemently pro-Black boyfriend is against the game, but he doesn't know that Kiera invented it.

Slay is a hugely engaging, pacy novel that confronts important issues in a complex and relatable way; it would make a brilliant class text. Not surprisingly, it's been immensely popular, and despite the necessary suspension of disbelief, I was totally caught up in it.

Ghost Wall

I saw Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss recommended by Penni Russon, who teaches it at uni, and instantly grabbed it from the library. Penni assured me I would love it, and I did. For such a short novel (less than 150 pages), it's incredibly powerful, weaving together questions of class and privilege, power, gendered violence, history and politics, into a seemingly simple but deeply charged situation.

Seventeen year old Sylvie is camping with her family, a handful of students and a professor, attempting to re-enact Iron Age lives -- fishing, foraging, hunting rabbits. Somehow the adult men end up doing the more exciting activities: hunting, drumming, constructing a 'ghost wall' hung with skulls to frighten the Romans away. Meanwhile, Sylvie and her mother, and the single female student, Molly, are stuck with washing the dishes, cooking, and searching for berries. But Sylvie's father, a bus driver with an unsavoury passion for what he imagines to be a more 'pure' British past, is simmering with frustration and the need to impress the professor, and violence is not far away.

Ghost Wall is a masterclass in tension -- even the first couple of pages are brimming with horror -- which builds like summer heat. References to the recently fallen Berlin Wall locate it in the early 1990s, perhaps a less informed time, when concepts like consent were not at the forefront of consciousness. Sylvie's dad is horrible, but he's also a fully rounded character, denied the privilege of a 'proper education' by entrenched class prejudice, trapped in a job that prevents him from spending time outside. I felt for her mum, too, walking on eggshells and longing for a 'sit down' (something Sylvie doesn't appreciate!)

Above all, Ghost Wall is shot through with the eerie presence of those former inhabitants whose lives the re-enactors are trying to imitate. This is a political and domestic novel, but it's also very creepy. Loved it, loved it, loved it.
 

A Company of Swans

I recently read another novel by Eva Ibbotson, The Countess Below Stairs, so I pounced on this ex-library copy of A Company of Swans. Originally published in 1985 as an adult romance (like The Countess), it was reissued in 2013 by Macmillan Children's Books. I feel this was a... dubious... decision. Certainly from the look of this cover, and the others in the Macmillan series, the casual browser would probably take A Company of Swans to be a conventional ballet book, a suitable follow-up to Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes, or Lorna Hill's Sadlers Wells series. But it's not.

A Company of Swans is a sweet, frothy romance. Young adults could definitely read it in safety, and no doubt that was what Macmillan intended. However, to my eye, it is clearly marked and packaged as a children's book: a children's book that features, as the kids say these days, 'some spice.' We have brothels, seduction, naked breasts and an instance of heartbreaking child neglect. It also has an exotic setting -- South America in 1912 -- with some potentially awkward colonialist overtones. However, overall, it's a delightful romp, with a noble hero, a kind, determined heroine, and an array of stiffly respectable adversaries whose defeat is a joy to witness.

I think I know exactly what to expect from Eva Ibbotson now, and I'm looking forward to reading more.
 

Song For a Dark Queen

I read quite a lot of Rosemary Sutcliff in high school, and I vividly remember the 1977 TV series of The Eagle of the Ninth. Sutcliff's books usually portray Roman Britain from the Roman point of view, but Song for a Dark Queen for once shows events from the other side. Song For a Dark Queen is told by Cadwan, who is Boudicca's Harper and therefore close by her side throughout.

This is a slim novel (I found it in a street library), less than 200 pages long, but it's grim, poetic and intense. Sutcliff adopts the theory that the Iceni tribe was matrilineal, the Queen and her daughters sacred to the Mother Goddess, and her consort the King chosen as a warrior. Of course this would have been completely foreign to the patriarchal Romans, who decreed that after Boudicca's husband was killed, leaving no son behind, that was the end of the royal line, and the lands of the Iceni could be absorbed into Roman governorship.

The horrors of the treatment of Boudicca and her daughters is not explicitly dwelt upon, but it's not shied away from either. Song for a Dark Queen contains rape, slaughter, ritual execution and descriptions of hand to hand battle. I don't know if I'd recommend it to children, though it was chosen as a Children's Book of the Year in 1978! These days it would definitely fall into the YA category, but even for YA, it's pretty dark, and there is no happy ending here.
 

Fire and Hemlock

When I was doing my recent Diana Wynne Jones binge, I remembered that I used to have a copy of Fire and Hemlock, which seemed to have mysteriously disappeared (I must have lent it to someone). Anyway, I bit the bullet and bought myself another copy and plunged in.

You would think that, having read it before, I would find the plot easier to understand. I did not. What did help immensely was finding a blog post from someone which explained the 'problematic' ending and the rest of the story while they were at it. This is an extremely clever, deeply layered, intelligent book which draws on several different legends, most obviously the ballads of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin, in which the Fairy Queen takes a mortal as her king for ten years, after which he is supposed to be sacrificed, but is saved by the heroism of his mortal lover, Janet. In Fire and Hemlock, Thomas Lynn takes the part of Tam Lin while Polly is his saviour -- a female hero, loyal, brave and imaginative.

The actual mechanics of the deal that Mr Lynn strikes with the Fairy Queen and her minions, and the way Polly finally overcomes their bargain, are too complicated to explain (maybe I still don't fully grasp them :), but this doesn't at all get in the way of a deeply engaging, playful and original story which races along in a most satisfying way. 

This is not to say that the novel is without flaws. The growing friendship between Polly, aged ten at the start of the book, and adult Mr Lynn, is uncomfortable to read, especially as he really is, in a sense, grooming her. By the end of the story Polly is nineteen and Tom is, at the very youngest, twenty-nine -- still a big gap but not an impossible one -- but still... In fact, most of the relationships in the book are uncomfortable in one way or another, except for Polly's grandmother, who is fantastic.

Fire and Hemlock is not an easy read. It's about as sophisticated as young adult literature gets, considerably more sophisticated than the 'adult' murder mystery I was reading at the same time. And it's definitely a book I will reread in the future.

Fireweed and Lapsing

 

Jill Paton Walsh is an author I discovered relatively recently, and I am still actively collecting her novels. Quite coincidentally, I found two of her books within a week or so of each other. I found Fireweed in a small op shop in Euroa, with a tiny collection of YA books for sale (I gasped audibly when I saw it on the shelf). Lapsing turned up, appropriately enough, at a church book sale in the city among many books about theology and missionary travels, and it only cost me a dollar.

I loved Paton Walsh's Wimsy sequels, and I also relished her Imogen Quy mysteries, but of her standalone novels, I definitely liked these two best (so far). Fireweed is very short (even by Paton Walsh's standards) but it tells a vivid and moving story, of two teenagers from very different backgrounds camping out alone in London in the middle of the Blitz. The Blitz setting is breathtaking in its brutal detail; Paton Walsh thanks 'everyone I know who was old enough to remember 1940,' and the novel very much has the flavour of lived memory.

The same is true of Lapsed, though this is a very different kind of novel; it feels autobiographical in parts. It centres on Tessa, an Oxford undergraduate in the 1950s (like Paton Walsh herself), a staunch Catholic who finds herself being courted by several young men and who makes a choice that is consistent with her beliefs, but which will probably baffle a modern reader. Shot through as usual with philosophical and moral struggles, Lapsed feels unusually heartfelt (unlike A School for Lovers, which was much lighter, almost farcical in tone). Like Tessa, Paton Walsh was also a Catholic. She formed an attachment to another man while already married; she did eventually marry the second man, but only after the death of her first husband, who was also a devoted Catholic; so we can only guess how much of her own experience was poured into Lapsed.

Finding Phoebe

Finding Phoebe by UK writer Gavin Extence was a recommendation from my book group. I'm not sure I would have picked it up on the strength of the cover, because Phoebe (presumably) looks quite miserable, and that's not the tone of the book at all, though there are definitely moments of sadness and stress and confusion. What makes this novel distinctive is Phoebe's voice: she has ASD, she is extremely articulate and observant, but the disconnect between her intellectual precision and her misunderstandings of social interaction and subtext is where much of the humour of the book resides. 

It took me a couple of chapters to ease into Phoebe's voice but once I was there, I was utterly charmed and delighted to spend more time in her company, which mirrors the character's own social experiences. She is 'weird,' but she is also very intelligent, kind and insightful. I loved that this is mostly the story of a friendship between two girls -- Phoebe and Bethany have been friends all their lives, and when Bethany gets into trouble, it's Phoebe who comes to the rescue in all sorts of ways. That's not to say that Phoebe is perfect -- she reacts strongly, she doesn't always recognise her own emotions, and she is clinging to some illusions about her own family that she has to learn to let go.

Extence says he wrote this book for his own ASD daughter, who is not yet a teenager but is coming up to it fast, so that she would have a character to relate to. But I think everyone, and not just young people, would benefit from seeing the world through Phoebe's eyes for a while.

Some Shall Break

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a HUGE fan of Ellie Marney, and I gobbled up her previous FBI novel, None Shall Sleep, with ravenous glee. Inspired by Mindhunter (which I also loved) and set in the 1980s, these books feature earnest Travis Bell, trainee FBI agent; damaged but resilient Emma Lewis, who escaped from a serial killer; psycho but charismatic monster, Simon Gutmunsson, and his oddly charming twin, Kristin. Some Shall Break sees our team on the track of a copycat, and ends on a beautiful loose end which I'm sure will be the subject of book three (thanks to social media, I know that Ellie is working on book three right now!)

The Shall novels hit a particular sweet spot for me, in that they deal with horrific crimes (rape, murder, abduction, torture) so the stakes are always very high; but they are not so graphic that I get disturbing images seared into my brain. I don't enjoy reading about real world pain and suffering, and I don't enjoy reading about imagined pain and suffering either. But perhaps because these novels are YA, they skirt the margins of the worst crimes, leaving the details mostly to our own imaginations (or not, if preferred; which I do).

I cannot wait for book three. Crack on, Marney!

Gender Queer

I went to the Athenaeum Library intending to restrict myself to borrowing two books. Needless to say I came away with four... Gender Queer was one of them. I was aware of Maia Kobabe's 2022 graphic memoir vaguely as one of the most banned books in America, and there are some elements of this book that might be a bit 'graphic' for younger readers, but honestly, most teens will see much more explicit content than this on the internet every day.

Gender Queer is a detailed, honest and moving account of Maia's journey through questioning eir gender identity and sexuality (Kobabe uses Spivak pronouns, e, em and eir, which I wasn't aware of before, but which I quite like). It was super easy to read -- I almost finished it on the tram on the way home -- funny, engaging and very relatable. It really makes plain that every person's experience is different and nuanced, and it underscores the ridiculously arbitrary nature of the boxes we put ourselves into. (As an old school eighties feminist, I probably incline more towards the ideal of removing the boxes, rather than creating more and more of them, but that seems to be the way society is moving.) Maia doesn't feel comfortable identifying as a woman, but also doesn't see emself as a man -- ey are looking for gender balance, are attracted to androgyny, and are delighted when people aren't sure if ey are male or female.

I really enjoyed Gender Queer. I don't think it's anything to be afraid of, and I certainly don't support it being banned anywhere. I found it a helpful, enlightening and fascinating story, clearly and simply told. More power to you, Maia.
 

Across the Barricades

So this was the missing volume in my Kevin and Sadie series -- I'd picked up The Twelfth Day of July from Brotherhood Books, and found volumes 3, 4 and 5 in a street library. But Across the Barricades is the crucial book, the linchpin on which the whole series turns. This is the book where Kevin and Sadie, three years on from The Twelfth Day of July, meet again and become a couple.

Now Kevin is eighteen going on nineteen, and Sadie (I think) is sixteen or seventeen. Their relationship is very innocent: they go for walks up the hill, they catch the bus to the seaside, and eventually they meet each other at Sadie's former teacher's house, where she has a job as a cleaner. But the opposition they face, as a Catholic boy and Protestant girl, is fierce. Kevin is beaten up, Sadie is the subject of cruel gossip, but in the end it's their friend Mr Blake who pays the highest price for their love.

This is a very unsentimental book, in fact no one does use the word love. Deaths  and injuries mostly happen off screen. The most romantic line we get is when Sadie and Kevin admit they 'feel right' together. Knowing the difficulties they will face in the future, and the troubles they are leaving behind, it really is miraculous that they stick together, but the reader never doubts their loyalty to each other. In the later books, the Troubles are mostly far away, but this book brings them to shocking life. No wonder they decided to run away. 

I'm really happy to have collected the whole set, though I'm not sure the later books, when Kevin and Sadie are married with kids, even count as young adult! But these two always seem older than their years. Even at the start of Across the Barricades, they are both out of school and working for their living. At first I wondered if contemporary young people could relate to this world -- but then, they are well aware of conflict elsewhere. Recast Kevin and Sadie as an Israeli and a Palestinian, and it would be the same story today.
 

A Proper Place and Hostages To Fortune

I've really enjoyed my time with Kevin and Sadie. Joan Lingard has created such an appealing young couple ; they are realistically impatient and frustrated with each other at times, but they always manage to come back together. They are a good team -- Kevin, steady and reliable, Sadie, bubbly and cheerful. I genuinely found myself admiring the way that Sadie makes an effort to make new friends wherever they go and embed their little family into the community.

A Proper Place opens with the couple (plus new baby Brendan) living in a couple of run-down rooms in Liverpool, before Kevin lands a job on a farm and they all move to the country. Hostages to Fortune finds him, alas, losing that job and the couple take to a camper van (I'd never heard one referred to as a 'caravette' before!) and picking up work where they can, before finding a prospect of a home where they might be able to settle down for good. While Kevin and Sadie's relationship is strong, it's sorely tested at  times by the difference in their religion, something they've managed to dodge until now, and especially by their families. Sadie's mum barges in to visit from time to time, much to Kevin's discomfort, while Kevin's mother has gone downhill rapidly since his father's death (it seems as if she's succumbing to dementia) and troublesome siblings turn up on Kevin's doorstep for him to deal with. His mother never brings herself to even acknowledge his marriage, and can't understand why he can't just come home to help her.

I think my favourite part was when new hippie friends Matt and Angelica suggest that Kevin's wayward sister 'just needs love,' which a modern reading of the text definitely supports, but which just bewilders Kevin and Sadie! Hostages to Fortune left some loose ends (particularly regarding that difficult sister) and I wonder if Lingard ever intended to continue Kevin and Sadie's story -- by this time, though, they were probably getting too old to justify being in YA novels, even under the imprint of Puffin Plus.

Into Exile

A few months ago I read The Twelfth of July, the first volume in Joan Lingard's Kevin and Sadie series, about a pair of star-crossed lovers in Belfast during the Troubles. And then the other day I was walking past a street library and saw volumes 3, 4 and 5 just sitting there. It was like a sign...

So now I've read volume 3, Into Exile, which sees Sadie (17) and Kevin (19) married (!!!) and living in London. Obviously I've missed the events of volume 2 which have seen them fall in love, against the opposition of both families, and run away together (references in Into Exile hint at the cost of this decision). Published in 1973, it's an extraordinary time capsule: Sadie is working in a department store, spending most of her days bored and idle behind the counter; Kevin gets a job in a radio repair shop (radios barely exist anymore, let alone repair shops). I loved the portrait of multi-cultural London, with families from India, Pakistan and the West Indies jostling in the couple's lodging house. They don't have a telephone in their single rented room. When Kevin is called back to Belfast, they can only communicate by letter or telegram; there's no chance of a chat to smooth over misunderstandings. And they are so young! And so isolated, far from home and family.

At the end of the book they are reunited in Ireland, and Kevin has made the agonising choice between the needs of his family, and his commitment to his young wife. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Kevin and Sadie.