What All Teenagers Should Read: Part 2

 Over on Substack, here's part 2 of what all teenagers should read.

Jenny Nimmo

 I've written a little piece on Jenny Nimmo over on Substack. 

William Mayne's Jingle Stones Sequence

During lockdown, I have been returning to the books I read as a child: partly for comfort, partly from a sense of curiosity. When I stumbled on William Mayne’s Earthfasts, it was as if a magnesium flame had been lit, that past time scorching into the present, reforged and changed. Published in 1966, the novel begins with a truly eerie moment, when a drummer boy appears out of the ground to David and Keith, two startled teenage boys.

The drummer boy carries a candle, whose removal has woken the sleeping King Arthur: it’s not the right time for him to return, and the candle must be replaced. That simple plot breakdown doesn’t do justice to this work, which also deals with Yorkshire dialects, history, troublesome boggarts, translations of Horace, and the mysteries of life and death.

I hadn’t read Cradlefasts, the sequel, which appeared 30 years later. I probably thought I had grown out of children’s books. Mayne updated the setting, so the boys who were teenagers in the 1960s are still the same age in a world of mobile phones: it all adds to the disorienting effect. A young girl claims to be David’s dead little sister; the drummer boy longs for his own time. There’s barely any plot to speak of, instead relying on a vivid sense of landscape and an exploration of mortality. It hardly seems to follow the previous novel at all, until right at the end, when things slide dizzyingly into place.

I’m hooked. Candlefasts, the final part, which appeared in 2000, brings in giant spiders and the particles of time itself. For a period when the world seems to be half-embalmed, out of kilter, I can’t recommend them enough. Often wilfully obscure, Mayne’s writing yet achieves moments of startling epiphany.

Mayne killed himself in 2010, having been found guilty of abusing girls. His books were removed from schools and libraries. This raises difficult questions about art and its relation to its maker. Should such troubling circumstances cloud the beauty of his works? He produced over 100 titles; none are in print. You can get them second hand. You’ll find jewels.

Cheltenham Festival: Fantasy event with Philip Reeve, Melinda Salisbury and Alice Broadway

I'm chairing what looks set to be a fantastic fantasy (apols) event at the Cheltenham Festival this year on the 7th October. You can find out more details here: I will be talking to Philip Reeve, Melinda Salisbury and Alice Broadway about their works.

THE DARKENING PATH

The Darkening Path trilogy is almost complete...

We Love This Book piece on Fantasy

I've written a piece on my favourite fantasy novels for young people of the last seven years, for We Love This Book. Read it here.

How to write a fantasy world: Guardian piece

Good afternoon. I've written a piece for The Guardian about writing fantasy, which you can read here.

Publication Day for THE KING'S SHADOW

Now that I've got your attention, let us all celebrate the publication, today, of the second in The Darkening Path series: THE KING'S SHADOW.

Here's the blurb:

Simon's sister and Flora's brother are prisoners of the Broken King, and they have entered his land determined to rescue them. But here, nothing is quite what it seems. Who can Simon and Flora trust? What does Pike, their mysterious companion, stand to gain? As rumours of war and revolution swirl around them, and as the sinister Knight of the Swan dogs their every move, the pair must confront their terrifying final task. And if they can free their siblings, will they then be able to open the way between the worlds, and return home?"

You know what you have to do! The best thing is to go to your local bookshop and ask for it. The next best thing is to head, electronically, to the Waterstones website here, or the Foyles website here. Go forth and devour!

Review of The Liberators by Philip Womack on Just Imagine

I've stumbled across this review of The Liberators on the Just Imagine Story Centre. It's a lovely one:

"Ivo Moncrieff is thirteen and a half years old and he’s never been to London. Even before arriving at his glamorous aunt and uncle’s home for Christmas, he’s thrown into the greatest adventure any boy could ask for. As he enters London’s Underground, and waits for a train, an object is thrust into his hands by a wild stranger with an incoherent message. Moments later the boy witnesses the stranger’s gruesome murder, and Ivo is next in line to die if he doesn’t keep his wits about him. Ivo finds out he’s up against the ancient power of the Liberators who, after centuries in the shadows, are impatient to overthrow London. The murderers want the object, they seem untouchable from the laws of the land, and he’s a vulnerable child in a grown-up’s world. As the city approaches total breakdown, it’s all down to Ivo; his two new friends, a boy and a girl; plus an eccentric slightly over the hill adult hero. “Myth and fantasy intrigued me,” Philip Womack states, “I have always been interested in the human…to impose patterns upon what is chaos, and to find meaning in what we find meaningless.”

" The Liberators is a book full of rumbustious non-stop action from start to finish. It must be the dream of many boys to be caught up in a fantastic escapade completely outside an adult’s experience and imagination. This is its strength and some of its weakness. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It didn’t let up for a single moment, not even when Ivo goes for a cup of tea in a café; I would have adored to have been a customer that day. Tatler (also, informally, The Tatler) has stated that Philip Womack is "The New Philip Pullman".

"An enthralling tale that attempts to explore what it means to be a child surrounded by adults who have power and authority. "

http://www.justimaginestorycentre.co.uk/content/liberators

Black Swan: Review, and The Problem of Fantasy

I've only seen Swan Lake on the stage once, which was the Matthew Bourne version at a theatre in Moscow a few years ago. The audience was positively thrumming with jollity; it was a production that highlighted the light touches. Not so Black Swan.

Natalie Portman plays Nina, an ingenue who, still mother-bound, dreams of success (right at the beginning she sees a poster advertising the prima ballerina; Portman conveys her character's suppressed ambition brilliantly with the tiniest of moues.) She dances in a company full of rivalries (overt and hidden). Her director (Vincent Cassell in "I am European" mode) is so sexually manipulative it's a wonder anybody can stand up when he's around. Since he's European, he's obviously a scheming arch-fiend with a Plan. In order to pull out the cash from his uber-rich benefactors, who presumably haven't been coughing up quite so much since his previous darling (Winona Ryder! Who sticks things into her cheeks to prove she's a psychopath!) is almost over the hill, he decides to put on Swan Lake. It's over done, but the public love it.

Poor sweet little Nina! She sleeps with a music box by her bed that her mother winds up for her every night. How is she going to get in touch with her Dark Side so she can play the Black Swan effectively? Darth Vader comes in the form of a loose, free and easy ballerina from California, who takes Nina out to a party and - shock! - gives her drugs! And talks about sex! Nina begins to go doolally. She appears to actually be metamorphosing into a swan, at times, even finding a small black feather growing out of her shoulderblade. She is haunted, too, by a doppellganger, like James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner; or, if Cassell is Archimago, like a wicked Duessa. For this is a film about defined opposites: a chess board, with no grey areas in between.

One ought not, of course, to take Black Swan seriously. It's actually gloriously rendered, almost dripping with luxury and menace, and it's as tightly wound as a ballerina's dancing shoe.

It also brings up the interesting question: why is it only in dancing films that critics mutter, 'oh, she isn't a proper dancer?' Well, no - she's an actor, and actors tend to do things on screen and stage that they are not properly qualified to do in real life. This is something called 'acting', which is 'pretend', and it's something that most of us have done from a very early age. It's not as if watching The Bill people go - 'hang on - he's not a proper policeman - how can he possibly arrest that man?' Or, to take a closer example, pianists. People complain about 'the world portrayed' in films - since when has a film had to be true to life? This is a problem that seems increasingly to be infecting criticism (in general and on the page) - as if people have almost forgotten that a film or a book can be purely fantastical. Black Swan is a gloriously fruity, magic, wedding-cakey confection of tinsel and glitter. It's as real as the Easter Bunny, and just as sick-makingly enjoyable.