I was born and brought up in the north of England. I have a degree in English and taught English Literature to older teenagers for many years. The period between 14 and 19 is an age group that has always fascinated me. It’s a time when people are accumulating experience and trying to understand themselves and their lives. The books I’ve chosen all put young people in challenging situations and excel at showing how they respond, handling, in sensitive and insightful ways, the moods and tensions of growing up. Most of my own novels have young heroes and heroines, although they’re read by people of all ages.
Five young friends get an amazing invitation. A wealthy celebrity offers them a luxury holiday in his Tuscan villa. They travel full of excitement, but when they get there, they find the villa empty. Its location is remote, and with no transport, internet connection, or mobile signal, they’re cut off. But there’s plenty to eat and drink, and a note tells them that others will join them soon, so they are reassured enough to settle in.
Their calm is shattered by a series of scary events that bewilder, confuse, and force them to review their friendships, rethink what’s important to them, and consider whether some of the things they thought were real actually are.
Katniss Everdeen volunteers to replace her sister in a life-threatening situation and so puts herself in grave danger.
I think she’s a great heroine and I love her character, the way that a generous act draws her into a nightmare of strife and peril. She’s tough, independent, and refuses to compromise. The awful post-apocalyptic world is vividly drawn, as are the creepy people who manipulate the contestants in the games. The romantic element featuring Peeta is compelling and I felt for both of them.
It’s a very skilful construction and the ending drew me immediately into the next book in the series.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before - and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever...
I loved the setting of this book, the whole premise of the formation of a band and the way real people such as David Bowie, Jerry Garcia, Cass Eliot, and John Lennon (to name but a few) wander across the pages and interact with the fictional characters. It makes the whole thing seem real.
The five band members are well drawn, from the singer Elf, who comes across as strong and sexy, to the mysterious and troubled Jasper de Zoet. And all this detail and realism is conveyed through smooth and highly readable prose.
It’s one of the few books I finished in one sitting.
The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS, 'one of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country' (Independent).
Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you've never heard of.
Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent times. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on.
I love this book, a beautiful celebration of young love set in the summer 1997.
It’s easy to identify with Charlie Lewis, his failed school career and his shambolic home life. He meets the rich and privileged Fran Fisher, whose background is totally different from his. The contrast between them is beautifully drawn and I felt for Charlie as he tentatively moved towards a girl he feels is out of his reach. His insecurity is moving.
The Romeo & Juliet link which is obvious from the title is well handled, enriching without being intrusive. There’s a heart-rending sense of nostalgia that reminds you of what it’s like to be trying to find your feet as a teenager.
“A tale of first love that hits all the right notes . . . [it] just might be the sweetest book to brighten your late summer.” —The Washington Post
"Dazzles with wit.”—People
From the bestselling author of One Day comes a bittersweet and brilliantly funny coming-of-age tale about the heart-stopping thrill of first love—and how one summer can forever change a life.
Now: On the verge of marriage and a fresh start, thirty-eight year old Charlie Lewis finds that he can’t stop thinking about the past, and the events of one particular summer.
This is a great coming-of-age love story, and although the characters are a little old for the YA category their problems are the same as those that many younger people face.
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, but Marianne is a loner. However, there’s a mutual attraction and the two find themselves drawn to each other. They move on from school to a prestigous university, and although they try to stay apart they keep being drawn together. There are mistakes and misunderstandings, but the main feeling is of the ache and yearning of first love.
The TV adaptation was very good, but the book is so much better.
NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships” (People) from the author of Conversations with Friends, “a master of the literary page-turner” (J. Courtney Sullivan).
ONE OF THE TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE—Entertainment Weekly
TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—People, Slate, The New York Public Library, Harvard Crimson
AND BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, Vox, The Paris Review, Good Housekeeping, Town &…
This book begins part way through the story, when one night in a Toronto theatre, onstage performing the role of King Lear, 51-year-old Arthur Leander has a fatal heart attack. We don’t see the relevance and connection of this till later.
The way the book gradually unpeels the story and we get to know more about the characters and what they face is one of the things I like about this fascinating book. The situation is a pandemic in the form of a flu pandemic so lethal that, within weeks, most of the world's population has been killed, and most of the action takes place long after the plague is over when in various ways people are trying to rebuild.
Mandel is a great storyteller, who cleverly interweaves the lives and fates of her characters. It’s both a mystery and a post-apocalyptic story with a dense plot that makes it a true page-turner.
'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' - George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones
Now an HBO Max original TV series
The New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction National Book Awards Finalist PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in…
This climate fiction novel follows four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. Told mostly through a diary and drawing on scientific observation and personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Her gritty memoir describes a near-future Toronto in the grips of severe water scarcity.
Single mother and limnologist Lynna witnesses disturbing events as she works for the powerful international utility CanadaCorp. Fearing for the welfare of her rebellious teenage daughter, Lynna sets in motion a series of events that tumble out of her control with calamitous consequence. The novel explores identity, relationship, and our concept of what is “normal”—as a nation and an individual—in a world that is rapidly and incomprehensibly changing.
Centuries from now, in a post-climate change dying boreal forest of what used to be northern Canada, Kyo, a young acolyte called to service in the Exodus, discovers a diary that may provide her with the answers to her yearning for Earth’s past—to the Age of Water, when the “Water Twins” destroyed humanity in hatred—events that have plagued her nightly in dreams. Looking for answers to this holocaust—and disturbed by her macabre longing for connection to the Water Twins—Kyo is led to the diary of a limnologist from the time just prior to the destruction. This gritty memoir describes a…
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