More Than This by Patrick Ness

A boy drowns in the cold ocean.  To begin with we know little about him beyond the brutality of his death, but details begin to emerge and we learn about teenage boy Seth's life in America.  His circle of friends and growing love for one of them, his brother Owen, damaged by a terrible incident in the boys' childhood, his emotionally distant mother and medicated father. His life before his death.

But Seth wakes somewhere else, a place beyond his death.  He is alone in the English town and house he lived in until he was 8 and the terrible thing happened to Owen.  The town is overrun with weeds and in places a burnt wasteland.  Is this his personal hell, purgatory, or something else?

Ness never lets the reader stand on firm ground, making us ask questions about what we know to be real and our relationship with reality and technology.

Ostrich by Matt Greene

Alex has a brain tumour, he has just come out of hospital after having a hole drilled in his head.  But he is also a teenage boy and has to sort out the strange behaviour of his hamster Jaws 2, the mysteries of his parent's marriage, school work and school social life.  He has so much to learn, how to narrate his life as French schoolboy Serge in his exams, and how sex works from the acres of pornography on the internet.

Being of a certain generation my closest experience to Ostrich has been Adrian Mole, but Greene's first person narrator Alex is far far funnier and far more poignant, I was left literally howling with laughter at some points and reading bits out to family, both things I don't usually do.  The ending is achingly sad, but Alex shines, the dazzling mind of a typical monosyllabic teenage boy opened up wide.

Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

I picked this book up in the library while browsing and was glad I did. Although it is set in the near future it gives real insight into day to day experiences that people with autism have, how they think and interact with the world in different ways from 'neurotypicals'.

Lou is our first person narrator, a single man with autism living an independent life. He has a capacity to find patterns in data, this facility with the world of numbers lies in opposition to his difficulties with the world of society and language, a world that is alien and often hostile to him, but it has enabled him to have a good job.

In this near future world autism is becoming a rarity as a cure has been found that can be implemented at birth and, indeed, although Lou was not born in time to be cured he received interventions that meant he could function within society and make use of his skills to solve complex problems. He works alongside a small group of people who all have autism. They work in a unit with autism-friendly facilities, a gym to allow for trampolining to dissipate anxiety, and individual cubicles. But there is a new boss and he offers these vulnerable adults a simple option. They can take part in a trial of a new procedure which may 'fix' their autism, or there will no longer be a job for them. As Lou negotiates this new challenge, everyday life and friendship and fencing with friends his world opens up to us and, for me, challenged many of my assumptions and understandings.

Speed of Dark asks very real questions about the nature of society's relationship with autism, what 'different' and 'normal' mean and the ethics of looking for a cure for autism, something which has long been recognised as a disability but is only now beginning to be explored in terms of its important place in our evolutionary and intellectual history. A good thriller but one I really learned from

Refusal by Felix Francis

Sid Halley is back, but he's given up the literally bruising world of investigation for investment banking and a settled life with his wife Marina and daughter Sassy. But then Sir Richard Stewart chairman of the British Horseracing Agency comes to see him pleading for him to look into race fixing. Halley refuses and the next day Stewart is found dead. Despite his best efforts Halley becomes drawn in as a lethal Ulsterman has Sassy kidnapped and Halley realises he has no option but to fight back.

Felix Francis is now writing at a really good level and this is a brave return to one of Dick Francis' most beloved characters. Felix Francis uses his father's best technique of combining thriller with a real heart, we see Halley deal with the idea of hand transplantation and the possibility of once again having two hands, and of course face losing his beloved family. Powerful and moving.

The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness

George Duncan is a good and kind man, the kind of man that is left by women because there is no challenge in him.  He is not brutal or unkind, just decent, growing old alone in quiet desperation and loneliness.  He has a grown up daughter Amanda who is deeply unhappy, somehow unable to connect with people around her and make friends.  George manages a printing shop and folds paper into the shapes of animals and flowers while his assistant Mehmet taunts the customers with terrible service.

It is an uneventful life until one night George hears a soulful cry from his garden.  Bumping and tripping his way through and out of his cavernous house he finds a crane with a terrible wound, an arrow right through one of its great wings.  He manages to break the arrow and although bleeding the great bird flies away.  The next day Kumiko appears in his shop and moves into his life.  She makes scenes which incorporate George's figures, paper sculptures that bring the art world to a frenzy and anyone who sees them to tears.  But Kumiko's most beautiful works are a set that she shows only to George, describing the Japanese myth of the Crane Wife, a sad and lonely tale of love, passion and loss.

Ness weaves the Crane Wife myth, Kumiko's mysterious appearance and George's lonely life together beautifully, we are never sure who or what Kumiko is and how the myth and what George experiences mesh together.  I don't usually like stories that do not have a resolution, but this was a stunning exception.

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Ethan's Voice by Rachel Carter

Ethan has stopped speaking.  Living on his parents narrowboat Deity he doesn't go to school either, home schooled after being bullied but his parents and Mary from the council want him to return.  Then a girl arrives moored on a shiny boat near his.  Polly doesn't seem to mind that he doesn't talk, tentatively he begins to show her his world, the riverbank, the den that his father built for him.  And Ethan begins to believe that maybe, just maybe, he could want to speak again and face the hidden fears that made him mute.

Carter's skill is that she writes so eloquently from Ethan's point of view and in his voice, despite his voicelessness we hear the sadness and isolation of a young boy who doesn't fit and share with him his journey in this little tale.  Loved it.

Naked by Kevin Brooks

This is the best book I have read in a long time.  The Troubles (the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century) may be living memory for any of us over 30 but for teenagers they are history and a new book is needed to replace the likes of Joan Lingard's excellent Across the Barricades.  Naked fills this space brilliantly with a narrative seen through the eyes of naive teenage girl experiencing sex, first love and painful loss of innocence during a blazing summer.

It is 1976, London and Lili is 17, practicing Debussy in the school music room when Curtis Ray, the boy everyone loved, hated, wanted to be or be with, comes in and asks her to join his band.  She says yes and finds punk and love, their band feeding into the burgeoning Kings Road punk scene in London around Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's controversial shop Sex.  Brooks never forces the issue by name dropping, Curtis' band Naked fits naturally against a backdrop of the Ramones and Sex Pistols.  And when they need a new rhythm guitarist brilliant Irish musician William Bonney appears as if from nowhere and is promptly nicknamed Billy the Kid after his namesake.  As Curtis spirals out of control through alcohol and drugs Lili learns more about William and his life growing up as a Catholic in violently polarised Belfast and loses her innocence.

What Brooks does brilliantly in this is two fold.  Firstly, he writes convincingly in the voice of a 17 year old girl who is affluent but emotionally bereft, charting her growing awareness of a larger world and her own sense of self.  And secondly by putting the point of view behind her eyes he shows the horror of the Troubles and the UK bombings in a completely fresh light, as she learns so do we and what we learn is heartbreaking, of shattered families, brutality and fear.  It makes for an achingly melancholic book, and the way I would like my 10 year old to learn about this vital aspect of British history that made a generation what it is.