I do not want to pass on, for the present, from the books of Gareth P Jones (see my post from 3rd Feb, below) without recording some thoughts on what I think is his other very remarkable recent book for older children.
Although very different in many ways from Death or Ice Cream?, No True Echo, is also a rich and complex exploration of life and death, which very cleverly and effectively plays with narrative structure. This time there is perhaps slightly less emphasis on death itself, although several very significant characters do die - sometimes more than once! It is rather more of an exploration of the way life is lived, and what makes (or distorts) who we are. It is deep and often disturbing stuff, but again Gareth Jones succeeds in making it hugely entertaining at the same time.
He choses to explore his theme via a concept of time travel. Of course this is not in itself an original idea. Moreover, even though a novelist can easily use fantasy to overcome any purely scientific impossibility of such activity, it always carries with it real logical difficulty. The very concept of going into the past to alter the present always brings up the well explored, but never really satisfactorily resolved anomoly, sometimes called the 'grandfather paradox'. Some children's novelists (and others) seem to choose to more or less ignore this issue, just accepting the illogicality, but this rarely results in truly satisfactory fiction which, however fanciful, still needs to be logical at least in its own terms. Others resort to very complex, if not abstruse, explanations to try to avoid or resolve the paradox.
Gareth Jones certainly does not ignore the dilemma, but rather opts for the second potential route, exploiting the hypothesis that any intrusion of the present back into the past must necessarily split the time stream and create a second alternative reality alongside the 'originating one'. Since this happens , or has happened, multiple times in his story confusion is never far away. Indeed the chapter where he tries, through his characters, to offer a 'scientific' explanation is probably the least satisfactory one in the book. However this apart, Gareth Jones gleefully embraces the confusion, often using his beautifully worked narrative structure to jump time, and indeed 'timelines', without clear indication, so that the reader very soon shares and identifies with the confusion felt by Eddie, the story's principal character. The tale is told from different perspectives and in different voices, leaving the reader to piece together what is happening at the same time as Eddie. This means that, like Death or Ice Ceam?, it is a puzzle as well as a read - and a very absorbing and entertaining one too.
As the story unfolds and multiple versions of the characters' 'reality' play out it also becomes a very affecting one. For No True Echo is in many ways a love story. It is a story above a boy's love for his dead mother, and also about his (potential) love for the book's young female lead. As in Groundhog Day, certain key days are relived a number of times, but the similarity with that film is only superficial. Here, not only do we see a number of potential scenarios lived out, some seeming far more satisfactory than others, but also start to lose track of which is the 'originating' reality. The same soon applies to the characters. This means that when, at the end, an apparent resolution is reached, it is charged with all the poignance of underlying ambiguity. The superficial sentimentality belies, perhaps even points up, the reader's awareness of possibiy less happy outcomes. It is all very skilfully handled by this amazing writer and presents young people with a great deal to think about.
Despite its 'heavy' concerns, the book is certainly not without humour too, and much of the dialogue, for example, is delightfully amusing, often in a particularly droll way. There is wit as well as wisdom in the way it repeats, and near repeats, as it reoccurs in different temporal iterations. Is is simultaneously both impressively clever and subtly disquieting. Delicious.
I am pleased to see that No True Echo has recently been published in the US (and in a very handsome hardback to boot - cover below). I sincerely hope this means it will find many readers over there, and that you who do enjoy it will be encouraged to seek out other recent books too, particularly Death or Ice Cream? (Purchasable online.) It may be rather different from much you read, but I think you will be delighted as well as surprised, despite, or even because of that.
With these titles Gareth P Jones shows how writing for children and young adults can be quality literature in its own right. It seems to me that, on the back of a string of enjoyable and deservedly popular books, he is now emerging as a really original and significant children's writer, and heading for being one of the contemporary greats.
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