Cover: Alejandro Colucci
‘If there were not humans around to create it, the unreality of dragons would cease to be.’ (p 379)
Rarely YA . . .
I generally read a very eclectic range of books and have to admit to what my wife considers the very bad habit of often having several different ones on the go at the same time. These generally include the children’s fantasy I continually enthuse about, but can also encompass sci-fi, thrillers, historical fiction, and much besides. Mick Heron and Ben Aaronovitch are amongst recently savoured lockdown delights. I also enjoy non-fiction, everything from nature writing (I am a huge fan of Robert Macfarlane) to the Hornby Book of Trains (a bit niche, I know, sorry). At present I am much enjoying a history of the famous Parisienne bookshop, Shakespeare and Company; Paris and bookshops are two of my favourite places. However, novels aimed at the ‘YA’ market rarely pique my interest, the frequent mixture of dark fantasy and adolescent romance, doesn’t much appeal.
. . . but just now and then
However, there are a few very notable exceptions. Sally Green’s truly remarkable ‘Half’ trilogy (Half Bad; Half Wild; Half Lost) is one of the most compelling, disturbing and moving works I have read in the past few years, as are some of the latest works from Marcus Sedgwick (I especially admired The Ghosts of Heaven) and from the brilliant Frances Hardinge (A Skinful of Shadows and Deeplight). Each of these writers combines remarkably strong, fresh imagination, with compulsive storytelling, but also plumbs depths of feeling and meaning. Theirs are works of the highest quality literature for young adults and would be amongst my very top award winners, if the conferring of book prizes was in my gift.
Burning bright
Now, here is another in the same category. Anglo-American author Partick Ness has already won a deservedly high reputation through his ‘diverse zig-zag of books’, so his latest novel Burn was impossible to resist, in whatever bookshop section it was shelved. (Metaphorically speaking of course, bookshops currently being closed. Thank goodness for those independents still doing mail order). This latest novel of his did not disappoint. In fact it thrilled. This was my favourite read of the lockdown so far. (And, as I say, I have read a lot.)
The originality of Patrick Ness’s imagining is stunning, and both his evocative writing and his complex storytelling are equally breathtaking. To start, he places dragons into an otherwise historically plausible 1950s America, with the Cold War at its height and the threat of nuclear annihilation on everyone’s minds. Yet this is not ‘magical realism’, at least not as I expect it. His dragons are both accepted realities in this world, and strong metaphors at the same time. It is an incongruity that is at once implausible and challenging to our understanding of our own world. Dragons abound in contentempory fantasy. But not dragons quite like these.
Pride and prejudice
Another monster also stalks the rural American landscape of Burn, and that is an abominable, vicious prejudice. Although clearly engrained in its own place and time, it terrifyingly echoes across to our own world. These narrative elements rub shoulders with religion, cults and control, with destiny and prophesy, with devastating loss and grief, both immediate and longstanding. And, yes, here too are the pangs and pains of adolescence.
As his story develops, Patrick Ness draws increasingly on the concept of parallel worlds. This too is a conceit already extensively exploited in fiction, but his is a far more thoughtful and (again) realistic take than you will find in much sci-fi or fantasy. Whilst I would not label this book magical realism, I might just try to describe it as speculative reality. It plays with many of the tropes of fantasy, just as it plays with the real world of its readers, inside and outside their heads.
None of this prevents Burn from being a totally compelling story. Importantly, too, it is threaded through with the most sensitive exploration of close relationships, including young love, between both opposite and same sex couples. It is a passionate book, and an empowering one. It is deeply disturbing and deeply moving. It is grotesquely violent and sweetly tender, It is a thoughtful book and a viscerally excitingly one. It is both fantasy and not fantasy. It is about worlds with dragons, worlds with no dragons and the reality of both. It is about worlds with magic and the magic of all worlds. It is about being special enough to save whole worlds; about being ordinary enough to save all worlds. It is about war and devastation, annihilation. It is about prejudice, anger and hatred, hatred that burns with unimaginable ferocity. But it is ultimately about love; love that cannot vanquish . . . but that can, perhaps, thankfully, survive.
‘All annihilation was mutual in the end.’ (p 379)
but
‘He stepped out of this world and into the next, intent on finding his love.’ (p 383)
Strange bedfellows?
My current lockdown miscellany