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The Tangled Leaves of Anniseed

The Tangled Leaves of Anniseed

Tag Archives: Childhood

Monsters by Emerald Fennell

10 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by Anniseed in Young Adult Fiction Review

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Abuse, Childhood, Crime, Murder, Serial Killers, Thriller

Sometimes murder is child’s play….

I read this in one sitting last night and my skin is still crawling – my mind feels slightly disconnected, altered somehow. Don’t let the Blyton-esque cover fool you. This is a dark, deeply disturbing portrait of childhood gone wrong, in the vein of The Wasp Factory and We Need to Talk About Kevin – not for the easily perturbed.monsters

The nameless narrator is a twelve-year-old girl whose parents “got smushed to death in a boating accident when I was nine. Don’t worry – I’m not that sad about it.” Sent to live with her true-crime-obsessed Grandma, the girl develops an unhealthy interest in serial killers. Spending the summer with her aunt and uncle who run a crappy hotel in Fowey, Cornwall,  that interest will spiral out of control.

Two exciting things happen that summer. Firstly, the body of a naked woman is hauled out of the sea. Secondly, a thirteen-year-old boy called Miles comes to stay in the hotel. Completely dominated by his vile mother, Miles is unlike other boys, and the girl becomes Miles’s first friend. They quickly discover they share a passion for the macabre, and deciding to investigate the murder (as the police, they agree, are hopeless), the pair show the reader the underside of Fowey – not so much picturesque fishing village, as Royston Vasey by the sea. They also enjoy passing time playing the “murder game”, in which Miles attempts to strangle or drown the girl – a game which hints at the darker turn the story will inevitably take. As their friendship develops, and it becomes clear that a real serial killer is on the prowl, the pressure builds and builds until the children’s repressed emotions break free.

The narration is superb – the girl’s voice is as clear as crystal and utterly compelling. And through her narration we see the truth of things – yes, the children are monstrous, but so are the adults that surround them, who turn blind eyes to the children’s trauma and saturate them with shame. It is little wonder that things turn out the way they do. This is a portrait of how children turn bad, and how society likes to pretend that it happens in isolation – the children must have been “born evil”. The truth is far more disturbing.

Monsters is not for the faint-hearted – it’s ending is very shocking and the themes that it explores are uncomfortable in the extreme. But it’s brave and original, and lingers long in the mind. I really couldn’t put it down – it’s exceptional.

Aimed at a young adult audience, I would recommend this for 14+ to adult; and I think it’s definitely a novel adults should read, as it raises a dark mirror to the way we raise (or fail to raise) our children.

Hot Key Books, 2015, ISBN 9781471404627

The Seeing by Diana Hendry

30 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by Anniseed in Young Adult Fiction Review

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Childhood, Families, Tragedy

Lizzie makes friends with wild Natalie, when she saves Natalie’s weird little brother, Philip, from drowning. Before long the three children are inseparable, and sensible Lizzie is captivated by Natalie’s anarchic nature and the spooky game she plays – hunting down evil in the form of “Left-Over Nazis” through Philip’s psychic revelations. They spend their days harassing these “LONs”, but the game escalates to tragedy when Natalie becomes jealous of Lizzie and Philip’s bond with a local artist. This is a moving story set in a post-war seaside town, and deals with difficult themes of child abuse, loss and guilt, with the Holocaust casting its long shadow over the actions and motivations of the characters. It is sensitively written and captures the grief and rage felt by survivors of different horrors with insight and compassion. The character of Philip in particular draws the reader in, and as Lizzie starts to question her role in events as she grows older, you can feel a real empathy for the pains of childhood. 13+. Rating: ****

The Bodley Head, 2012, ISBN 9780370332130

The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne

09 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by Anniseed in Book Review

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Childhood, Crime, Families, Relationships

Reproduced with kind permission of Little, Brown Book Group

Reproduced with kind permission of Little, Brown Book Group

Daniel is now a hot-shot lawyer but once he was a lost and damaged boy, who could so easily have found himself on the wrong side of the law, if it hadn’t been for the love of his foster mother Minnie. Now he finds himself taking on the case of another lost boy, Sebastian, who has been accused of murder. Daniel empathises with the troubled Sebastian and the case causes him to re-assess his own past, particularly when he discovers that Minnie has died; he had cast her aside years’ before after discovering a hideous secret, and now that secret is haunting him. As the court case progresses and Daniel delves deeper into Minnie’s past as well as Sebastian’s, the notion of guilt and innocence starts to take on a whole new meaning.

I found this to be an intriguing first novel; the relationship between Daniel and Minnie is centre-stage rather than the murder case, and this makes it far more than a simple crime story. Their relationship is depicted with tenderness, and the complexity of human emotions is deftly captured. There is a real sense of loss here, both of love and innocence, and Ballantyne ably shows how this loss resonates across her character’s lives. The murder case adds an intriguing “what might have been” dimension to Daniel’s tale which I felt added to the poignancy of the central relationship. An excellent read, very involving and thought-provoking, which challenges the concept that guilt and innocence are irreconcilable opposites. Rating:***

Piatkus, 2012, ISBN 9780749957285

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