The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

This powerful and riveting cross-over novel is not for the faint-hearted. It begins: ‘I am a blood-soaked girl. Before me, a body. Pulped. My boots are drenched with his blood.’ The girl, seventeen year old Minnow Bly, raised in the Kevinian cult from the age of five, goes on to say, ‘I wonder if this is how the Prophet felt the moment he ordered my hands ripped from me.’

Is the Minnow handless? The answer is yes, and it was her father who used a hatchet to dispatch them. Within minutes after this scene, Minnow is arrested by the police (‘blurry white shapes, like ghosts, stuffed inside tight uniforms’); subsequently she appears in court and is sentenced to juvie.

It is never clear who the victim of her crime is, or what eventually happened to him, or even why Minnow attacked him. Suffice to say, most of the story is set – despite frequent flash-backs -- inside a correctional centre. There the brain-washed, illiterate girl tries to scratch at The Truth. She does this by questioning all around her who have different beliefs, and by learning to read. She befriends Angel, a convicted murderer who is wise beyond her years, and gradually forms a relationship with Dr Martin, an FBI detective who tries to make a deal with her to solve the mystery of the death of The Community and its leader, a man who once tried to ‘marry’ Minnow and her younger sister, Constance.

At almost 400 pages, this is a long read but the writing is always poetic and compelling. Constantly one is wondering what will become of Minnow; will she survive the endless internment away from the woods where she has lived for so long, will she confess to Martin, will she go to live with her lover Jude when she is released.

Stephanie Oakes’ debut novel is a powerful, dark, horrifying and atmospheric novel that totally engages the reader and lingers long in the memory. It is highly recommended for those who can cope with the dark side of life.

Reviewed by Dianne Bates

Title: The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

Author: Stephanie Oakes

Publisher:  Harper Collins

Publication Date: 1 July 2015

Cost: $19.99 RRP

Format: Paperback

Type: Young Adult fiction

The First Third

Some books sit on my reading horizon for an inordinately long time. And so it was with The First Third. I’m not sure why. I knew it would be an excellent read, CBCA Older Readers shortlisted in 2014 and well recommended by my reading friends.

One page in and I regretted not reading it sooner. This is a story that truly belongs to its characters. Not just the protagonist Billy, but Sticks (his best mate) Yiayia (his grandmother), Kate (his mum), Hayley (the girl he meets at the hospital) and his brothers Peter and Simon.

Yiayia Filyo is an indomitable force in Billy’s life. Her presence holds the family and the story together. While some people face possible death by putting their affairs in order, Yiayia puts her family in order from her hospital bed, providing Billy with a list of tasks to complete on her behalf.

Sometimes the solution she has in mind isn’t quite right and Billy has to improvise. He also adds a task of his own. Sticks has cerebral palsy and reluctantly ended a developing relationship before his partner could find out. But first, Mum needs a husband and there are many humorous moments as Billy and Sticks try to make that happen.

Billy’s brothers are an even more difficult task. Simon is contentedly happy but far away and Peter is so sullen and inaccessible it makes no difference that he lives in the same house. Billy cannot change their lives, not even for Yiayia, but sometimes change finds a different way through and the ultimately life-changing event for them all, brings the family together.

With Hayley and her young son, Billy finds a new appreciation for the value of family. One Yiayia knew he had all along, when she entrusted him with her bucket list, giving it first to Hayley to pass on to Billy.

Through skilful characterisation, themes of culture and identity and of family and friendship are explored.

I loved this book. It’s a testament to why older adults like myself read Young Adult fiction. We never grow out of the need for stories like The First Third.

There is laughter and love, humour and wit in these pages. If you haven’t read it, don’t wait like I did.

Reviewed by Sandy Fussell

Title: The First Third

Author: Will Kostakis

Publisher:  Penguin Australia

Publication Date: $17.99 RRP

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780143568179

Type: Young Adult Fiction

Cracked

This stunning debut novel is about first love, friendship, surviving when your world is falling apart,

and staying true to yourself at any cost, even when everything is cracked and you feel broken and alone.

Clover Jones is fifteen years old. She’s a former Steiner student with great potential, intelligence and artistic talent. She finds school boring. She’s a rebel, fighting against everything and everyone in her search to escape from her mother’s ‘flipside of reality.’ She worries about no food in the fridge, the threat of nuclear bombs, ice caps melting, and the end of the world amongst countless other things, including the fact that she doesn’t know where or who her dad is.

Her mum is a ‘walking dictionary’, a committed environmentalist, disorganised and chaotic. She doesn’t allow Facebook, mobile phones or television. Due to these technological restrictions, Clover’s life is a shambles. At school she’s called a freak. Even her best friend and childhood companion Alison, newly returned from Canberra, ignores her.

Keek is a total individual. His parents don’t get on so he spends a lot of time riding around on his bike. It’s this bike that draws Clover and Keek closer together when he offers to teach her to ride. He opens up to Clover; shows her sides to himself that no one else sees. She in return, is able to be herself with him.

Clever and sharp prose draws the reader into this journey through adolescence. Themes that confront young people today shape and colour the novel with skill and flair. The characters are outstanding and the pages are turned quickly for everything about this writing is new. I found this novel profoundly thought-provoking. It could well be my favourite novel of the year.

Reviewed by Anastasia Gonis

Title: Cracked

Author: Clare Strahan

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Publication Date: May 2014 $15.99RRP

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 978174336030

Type: Young Adult Fiction

Fairytales for Wilde Girls

This multi award-winning book is an eclectic mix of gothic fairytale, contemporary teenage issues and genuinely spooky stuff.

It only took two pages before I was deliciously disorientated and permanently hooked. I wasn’t just looking through Isola Wilde’s eyes, I was experiencing her world.

What a wonderful world it was, both strange and familiar, meshing reality and fantasy in a believable way. Isola has trouble with boys, school and home, ghosts, fairies and gargoyles.

She has human friends she can rely on and trust – her best friend Grape, her companion James and Edgar, the new boy next door. But these friends can’t help with the trouble she’s in. There’s a dead girl in a birdcage in Wilde Wood and her ghost won’t rest until Isola is dead.

Isola has other friends, equally as real, even though they are drawn from the pages of her mother’s book of fairytales, the Pardieu Fables and Fairytales by Lileo Pardieu. These, like Isola, are the children of Nimue– a fury, a fairy, a ghost boy, a mermaid and an old friend of spiders. Along with James, they are her six protector princes and she is their princess.

They all want to protect her but they can’t. At a time when they should pull together, they pull apart.

Fairytales for Wilde Girls is a book to be read slowly. There are nuances of plot and language that are easily missed. I admit to going back and rereading large chunks – just to make sure I had all the pieces.

The narrative is filled with wonderful words and phrases that sit seamlessly in the storytelling. I can flip open anywhere and find a visually evocative image:

She had a great oil spill of a cloak

Or this glorious piece of description:

The sky was a burnt sepia of autumn; a paper lantern moon hung aloft and the palette of the forest was bitten and bloody.

Or the fairytales book itself:

The enormous book was leather-bound and gold-gilded. It looked as if it had been knocked from a wild woman’s bookshelf as the raging townsfolk ransacked her cottage and dragged her by her hair to the oil-doused stake in the village square.

A truly amazing debut novel which has no doubt left many readers like me, waiting to see what follows.

Reviewed by Sandy Fussell

Title:  Fairytales for Wilde Girls

Author: Allyse Near

Publisher:  Random House Australia

Publication Date: $19.99 RRP

Head of the River

I’ll declare my prejudices up front. I'm a fan of Australian Young Adult fiction and I hadn’t read Pip Harry’s debut novel debut novel, I’ll Tell You Mine, so on one hand I was keen to read Head of the River but on the other hand, I am so not into boats.

I decided to read it regardless and I’m glad I did. It’s a testament to the storytelling and to the character development that I sat up all night reading until it was finished.

I’m still not interested in boats but I found myself fascinated by the Head of the River challenge and the political and social issues surrounding it as seen through the eyes of the Popescu twins, Leni and Cristian.

With Olympic oarsman parents, expectation and destiny is written in their genes. Cristian is the more gifted rower but he doesn’t have the commitment or determination to succeed that comes so naturally to Leni. He struggles, with training and fitness, and when everything starts to unravel, he is drawn to the easy solution performance-enhancing drugs offer.

For Leni, rowing has always been foremost but now she is finding to be the best rower, she also needs to be a good friend and team player.  

For me, the strength of this novel is in the characters and their relationships - the emotion, the maturing, the problems that arise and are resolved. The Head of the River race is the perfect setting to explore competitiveness and expectation and the risk-taking and soul-searching this can engender.

I found a touch of irony in the ending and I loved it.

Reviewed by Sandy Fussell

Title: Head of the River

Author: Pip Harry

Publisher: UQP $19.95 RRP

Publication Date: July 2014

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780702253263

Type: Young Adult Fiction