Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

Cover illustration: Ken Nwadiogbu

‘ . . . even when you do what they ask, they still don’t see you as a somebody.’ (p 264)

Murder and more 

My reading for this blog only occasionally strays into YA rather than MG, and even more rarely into murder mystery, but I am hugely grateful that chance brought me to this book by US author and filmmaker Nick Brooks. It is not only the cleverest and most engrossing whodunit I have encountered for quite some time but it is so much more too.

In style, although not in location, characters or language, Promise Boys reminds me most of the recent adult mysteries by Janice Hallett. That is to say, the reader is left to piece together events from the accounts of a wide range of characters, not all of whom are necessarily reliable or trustworthy. Their often brief testimonies are interspersed with mobile and text communications, news reports and other information, so that the reader has to work towards an understanding of the mystery, following a route strewn with clues and red herrings, in a way that is deeply intriguing and utterly compelling. And, as the story unfolds, what comes to fascinate just as much as the mystery itself is what we discover about the lives, characters and motives of those involved.

Set around the ‘Urban Promise Prep School’, an institution which purports to improve the education and life chances of inner-city Black boys through extreme discipline, the central mystery is who shot and killed the school’s founding and domineering principal - and, of course, why. The book’s protagonists are three boys (two Black and one Hispanic) who rapidly emerge as the principal suspects, readily targeted because of their skin colour and background.  The complex narrative develops as they desperately work to try to prove their innocence- if, indeed, they are guilt free after all.

USA to UK

The cultural setting of the story and the voices of the characters, especially of the three boys, are brought vividly and sympathetically to life. It is consequently easy to identify with them.We understand who they are, how they think, why they  behave as they do. The clever format of Nick Brook’s book, the skilled precision of his writing and his masterful manipulation of our feelings, make this a most immersive read.

I am delighted that this US book is now published here in the UK, where it should attract a large audience. I sincerely hope this will include many white as well as black kids. I am sure all will enjoy it enormously. The writing does contain an amount of vocabulary and slang which is an absolutely essential to its authentic feel but which may be unfamiliar to UK readers. However, meaning can generally be inferred from context, or quickly Googled where necessary. (Just what are ‘pupusas’? Well, that’s another thing I didn’t know before, but do now.) Black kids will I am sure delight in finding themselves reflected so recognisably in a book, but Promise Boys offers a great deal to all readers, and on more than one level.

You could say that Promise Boys is a YA equivalent to Sharna Jackson’s recent excellent  MG mysteries featuring Black protagonists*, but it is, of course, much deeper and richer, as befits its older audience. (This one, I would think, is best suited to readers from around 13 onwards.)

All that matters

Some time ago, poet W.H.Auden wrote: ‘There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.’  Written in the early 20th Century I think we can accept that his word choice was of the period. (Today I would strongly want to replace each of the uses of ‘man’ with ‘people’ and ‘he’ with ‘they’.) However, I think the sentiment holds true and is most certainly applicable to books. I particularly like the expression, ‘ . . . to unlearn hatred and learn love.’

What is especially remarkable about Promise Boys is that it fulfils quite wonderfully not just one but both of Auden’s essential functions. It is a totally compelling, intensely involving narrative that transports the reader out of their immediate reality. Yet it also reminds me of another quote, this time from UK comedian, broadcaster and podcaster,  Robin Ince, who writes, ‘I don’t retreat into books, I advance out of them.’** I finished reading Promise Boys with greater awareness, greater understanding and, I hope, a little more humanity than I started. For it is ultimately far more than a clever, wonderfully crafted whodunit. Nick Brooks tellingly contrasts the false promise of the school with the true worth of its pupils. It is a testament to Black boys (as well as girls and others from minorities and areas of socio-economic deprivation) who cannot, must not, be stereotyped as delinquents or continually forced to toe the line of white expectations. They do not deserve to be to criminalised without cause, or dismissed as invisible, worthless and inconsequential, as ‘nobody’. They are most certainly somebody, extraordinary individuals with hope and potential. They are members of our community with much to give, with lives, with futures  - and yes, with genuine promise.

* High Rise Mystery, Mic Drop, Sharna Jackson, Knights Of, 2019, 2020

** Bibliomaniac, Robin Ince, Atlantic Books, 2022

Like a Curse, Like a Charm by Elle McNicoll

  
Covers: Kay Wilson

Alike and different

It is brilliant that more neurodiversity is now being represented in children’s fiction, and in some very fine books too. The real potential of children who think differently is at last being promoted. Undoubtedly one of the trailblazer in this field has been Elle McNicoll. We must celebrate her as a writer just as she so effectively celebrates neurodiversity and inclusion in her books.

I hugely admired her first titles which fully deserved their many awards. But, for some bizarre reason I hadn’t caught up with Like a Charm until I picked up its newly published sequel, Like a Curse, the other day. So I tried to make amends and read them both together. (Well one after the other, to be strictly accurate!) And what a joy they were.

In this new duology Elle McNicoll has pulled off a very clever coup. She has combined her trademark promotion of neurodiversity with the sort of light fantasy that is so popular with many MG readers. She has added magical creatures to her evocative setting of contemporary Scotland, whilst ensuring that the quest of her highly entertaining novels is still for a kinder, more inclusive society.

LIKE A CHARM

‘When no one has any expectations of you, it’s easier to disappear. A bad reputation works like a charm. It keeps everyone from looking too closely.’  (p 109)

In her dyspraxic protagonist, Ramya Knox, Elle McNicoll has created is a kind of badass, female, beret-wearing Harry McPotter - with a heck of a lot of attitude.. But then Ramya has reason. As someone diagnosed with Dyspraxia she has had a lifetime of put-downs. 

‘There’s a price to being unlike other people. People can sense it. I grew up with faces frowning down at me in confusion and frustration. I became a measuring stick for people’s characters. For their patience, their compassion, their empathy.’ (p 91)

It seems most people around her didn’t measure up and her attitude is in direct response.

‘A flower grows thorns once it’s been snapped out of the ground too many times.’ (p 91).

Elle McNicoll’s great talent is in capturing the thoughts and feelings of her neurodivergent character, her resentment, her isolation. And she  communicates this in language and images that are at once straightforward, yet so telling:

‘They are a village. All linked together, overlapping and reaching across minor walls. . . I’m an island. Across the water. Watching the tide.’ (p 93)

Other characters too, are beautifully drawn to foil Ramya. Relationships are often sensitively and meaningfully developed, especially that with her grandfather, before and after his death, and with her cousin, Marley. The rest of her family and, indeed, many of the fantasy characters, the fae, vampires, sprites, trolls and the like, also spring vividly to life from the page.  

Like magic

Elle McNicoll also cleverly uses those fantasy characters to further her vital inclusion messages. Many of the ‘Hidden People’ are themselves shunned, feared, marginalised and outright dismissed by human society. The quest that Ramya inherits from her grandfather is to promote understanding and acceptance of their ‘difference’. Nor does Elle McNicoll ignore other issues of the real world. Her themes extend to both family tensions and wider political ones, some of which chime very potently with our current society. Her sensitive handling of the experience of loss and bereavement is balanced by hints of the the support and consolation to be found in friendly community.

The tale’s setting of Edinburgh, vividly and atmospherically evoked, is wonderfully apt as the context of her story; history, tradition, and ancient magic seem to seep from its very stones. And, even with so many crucial messages embedded within it, Like a Charm is a stonking good story, keenly exciting, with several surprising twists. With the help of the magnificent Kelpies, and Ranya’s own very special abilities, its climax is truly exhilarating, whilst humorous comeuppance and future promise round everything off very pleasingly indeed.

As a former school adviser, I even tried to forgive Elle McNicoll her obvious antipathy for the species, hoping all the while that I was never as lacking in empathy and understanding as the one she so entertaininglylampoons. 

LIKE A CURSE

‘I’m different. I should be allowed to celebrate and bask in that glow, but the whole family wants me to be quiet and cautious. And hidden. Just like other magical creatures. I don’t want to be hidden.’ (p 22)

Perhaps even more that the first book, this second majors on story, and what a story it is. It is of the most original and creative children’s fantasies I have come across for a good while. 

Here the narrative, switching between Edinburgh and the misty shore of a wintry Loch Lomond, pulses with  myth, folklore and tradition, but transfigured through wonderful imagination. Here are Selkies and Dryads, Witches and Sirens, in fact a whole host of magical creatures, but not as you have probably quite thought of them before. Even the much-hyped Loch Ness Monster turns out to be real (in a way) but is actually . . . Well I won’t say what it actually is, as that would be a terrible spoiler, but believe me it is both completely unexpected and utterly wondrous. There is mystery aplenty, and enigma too, not least in such wonderful conjurings as the shape-shifting ‘Ripple’ and the never named, elusive ‘Stranger’.  This  writing is so clever - and spiked with sharp, self-aware humour too

’Marley . . . worries over everything in life. Not just where the commas go.’ (p 32)

Yet this same Marley gently teaches us how to relate to neurodivergence.

‘Marley and I view the world through entirely different lenses. It frustrates and isolates both of us, sometimes. Yet Marley always tries to understand what I’m seeing, and never tells me I’m insane.’ (p 40)

Indeed this whole book is suffused with the perspective of the neurodivergent in a way that almost subliminally seeds understanding in the mind of the reader. And defiant, sassy Ramya is undoubtedly its hero, in her everyday life as on a fantasy level..

‘I’m neurodivergent. No moulding, no occupational therapy, no tough love or extra help or special education is going to change that. I’m never going to be a neurotypical child.’ (p 115)

Both Ramya and her creator have a wonderful ability to tell it straight. And to put us straight. 

Like character like author

Like a Curse is a deliciously engrossing story, a story of twists and turns, of discoveries and betrayals, of tender relationships and of thrilling confrontations.  As it moved on I felt more and more pleased that I had read these two books together. Rather than a novel and sequel they began to feel like two parts of the same story. But in the end,  I felt that it was not the exciting denouement of narrative strands, introduced in Book 1, that made this second book so important. It was the development of Ramya’s  character. What she learns, what she grows into, is a kind of resolution for those individuals who’s thinking is different from the ‘norm’, but also for all who are struggling to grow into themselves.

‘I have finally understood the need to control myself, to preserve my peace instead of rising to other people,’ (p 230) says Ramya towards the end of the narrative. But it is not simply about anger and control. Ramya discovers that she has remarkable, magical potential (and may well one day develop and use it) but she does not need it to be special. All that she needs for that is to be who she is. That is specialness itself. 

What Ramya has, and has in spades, is not is not angry resentment. It is not even magic as such, it is resilience.

I go back to the first of the two books for a quote that is, in context,  about Ramya, but that I believe applies equally to Elle McNicoll herself:

‘If I have to fail one hundred times inside a world that was never designed for me, then so be it. It will make winning all the more glorious.

Magic is easy to me. Magic is just the art of letting all that resilience sing.’ (p 304)

Elle McNicoll is a glorious, magical winner. She is a hugely successful neurodivergent writer, who communicates tellingly what it means to be neurodivergent. That makes her very special. But she is also a very fine writer, period.

 This duology is a triumph on so many levels. . . . and it sings.

My article for NATE Primary Matters

Challenging Key Stage 2 Readers - Part 1: Fiction

My article for the Spring 2023 edition of NATE Primary Matters magazine discusses the importance of books that challenge children’s language, intellect and emotions; books that not only entertain, but also broaden experience, stimulate imagination, develop empathy, challenge stereotypes and help their readers to grow as individuals.

The piece contains numerous recommendations of brilliant fiction for 7-11 year olds, including many books already reviewed on this blog. It also suggests some inspirational support books for Primary teachers.

NATE members can access the full online magazine here: 

https://www.nate.org.uk/publications/primary-matters-magazine/

Anyone else interested can view a pdf of my article via One Drive:

         https://1drv.ms/b/s!AnB1zHfDWOlG8mdZdYHMjWAM_yyr