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The Dead I Know, Scot Gardner.
Published in Australia several years ago, only recently published in the US. Aaron Rowe finds employment as an assistant to a local funeral director; as he learns to deal with the dead, and with his new relationships at work, he starts to come to terms with the deaths in his past and his own present precarious situation (he lives in a caravan park with Mam, whose dementia is becoming more severe.)
When I read this book I was startled all over again by the occasionally-huge gap between "literary" YA and "commercial" YA, and -- once I realized it was Australian -- the gap between American and non-American YA. (I don't know if US/non-US is the right distinction; but even within the Anglosphere there are very different cultures when it comes to YA fiction, and I keep being surprised by these GREAT YA books coming out of Australia.)
It's a quiet book, written with a great deal of crisp precision; it reminds me a bit of Adrian Chambers, who writes boy characters who are sensitive and emotional in very believable ways. It's not a perfect book -- I think the development of the book's central antagonist could've been better, and I question how the book dealt with one of the funeral home's dead clients, who is fat. But it is deeply honest and complicated and emotionally affecting.
Show and Prove, Sofia Quintero.
Smiley King and Nike Vega are growing apart as friends. It's the south Bronx in 1983, and while Smiley is trying to negotiate being one of the few black students at the prep school he attends on a scholarship, Nike fears being left behind. They spend their summer working at the day camp of St. Aloysius church -- and (for Smiley) getting involved with an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, and (for Nike) falling in love with a girl who he doesn't realize is a refugee from Lebanon.
It's a book with a lot of issues (HIV, crack, conflict in the middle East, gangs, tensions between blacks and Puerto Ricans, welfare) and not a strong overarching plot, but the voices are very strong, and the way it evokes the atmosphere of the early 80s -- the rise of hip-hop, roller discos, Donna Summer giving a free concert in Central Park, break-dancing, the crushing poverty that exists alongside with the ordinary joys of life -- gives it a real energy.
Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge.
When Triss wakes up, all she knows is that she fell into the Grimmer and has been ill. Her memories are fuzzy and untrustworthy, and she can't seem to stop eating; her mother coddles her, but her little sister Pen is terrified of her, insisting that she's not really Triss.
And she's not. But there's more than just the mystery of what happened to Triss; there are the letters that keep arriving from her brother Sebastian, years after he was killed in action in 1918; there's the snow that keeps falling on Violet, Sebastian's fiancee; there are those who Pen made a bargain with, a bargain that isn't over yet...
This is a book that is firing on every cylinder. The writing is lush and atmospheric. Hardinge intertwines a very personal story -- of Triss trying to recover her identity and peel back the layers of her family's lies and denial -- with a magical adventure story, and with a social story of the destruction wrought by the war and the sudden changes in the social order. Violet in particular is a fantastic character, a young woman who rides a motorcycle and goes to jazz clubs and yet has a lot more to her than being a signifier for a Cool Flapper Girl.
It reminds me a lot of Franny Billingsley's "Chime," but I think I might like it even better?
Published in Australia several years ago, only recently published in the US. Aaron Rowe finds employment as an assistant to a local funeral director; as he learns to deal with the dead, and with his new relationships at work, he starts to come to terms with the deaths in his past and his own present precarious situation (he lives in a caravan park with Mam, whose dementia is becoming more severe.)
When I read this book I was startled all over again by the occasionally-huge gap between "literary" YA and "commercial" YA, and -- once I realized it was Australian -- the gap between American and non-American YA. (I don't know if US/non-US is the right distinction; but even within the Anglosphere there are very different cultures when it comes to YA fiction, and I keep being surprised by these GREAT YA books coming out of Australia.)
It's a quiet book, written with a great deal of crisp precision; it reminds me a bit of Adrian Chambers, who writes boy characters who are sensitive and emotional in very believable ways. It's not a perfect book -- I think the development of the book's central antagonist could've been better, and I question how the book dealt with one of the funeral home's dead clients, who is fat. But it is deeply honest and complicated and emotionally affecting.
Show and Prove, Sofia Quintero.
Smiley King and Nike Vega are growing apart as friends. It's the south Bronx in 1983, and while Smiley is trying to negotiate being one of the few black students at the prep school he attends on a scholarship, Nike fears being left behind. They spend their summer working at the day camp of St. Aloysius church -- and (for Smiley) getting involved with an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, and (for Nike) falling in love with a girl who he doesn't realize is a refugee from Lebanon.
It's a book with a lot of issues (HIV, crack, conflict in the middle East, gangs, tensions between blacks and Puerto Ricans, welfare) and not a strong overarching plot, but the voices are very strong, and the way it evokes the atmosphere of the early 80s -- the rise of hip-hop, roller discos, Donna Summer giving a free concert in Central Park, break-dancing, the crushing poverty that exists alongside with the ordinary joys of life -- gives it a real energy.
Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge.
When Triss wakes up, all she knows is that she fell into the Grimmer and has been ill. Her memories are fuzzy and untrustworthy, and she can't seem to stop eating; her mother coddles her, but her little sister Pen is terrified of her, insisting that she's not really Triss.
And she's not. But there's more than just the mystery of what happened to Triss; there are the letters that keep arriving from her brother Sebastian, years after he was killed in action in 1918; there's the snow that keeps falling on Violet, Sebastian's fiancee; there are those who Pen made a bargain with, a bargain that isn't over yet...
This is a book that is firing on every cylinder. The writing is lush and atmospheric. Hardinge intertwines a very personal story -- of Triss trying to recover her identity and peel back the layers of her family's lies and denial -- with a magical adventure story, and with a social story of the destruction wrought by the war and the sudden changes in the social order. Violet in particular is a fantastic character, a young woman who rides a motorcycle and goes to jazz clubs and yet has a lot more to her than being a signifier for a Cool Flapper Girl.
It reminds me a lot of Franny Billingsley's "Chime," but I think I might like it even better?