I read Marcus Sedgwick's White Crow, my last of the six Carnegie Medal shortlistees, just in time for the awards ceremony last week. (It didn't win - see the Awards Nominations thread.) It was also shortlisted for last year's Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.
Last year I read Sedgwick's Revolver (itself shortlisted for the Guardian and the Carnegie), a very short novel, or long novella - 32k words - which did a lot with a very simple premise. Deceptively simple in treatment though, with a fairly complex flashback structure. White Crow is YA horror set in a town that's being slowly lost to the sea. Rebecca and her father relocate there. Bored and on her own, Rebecca befriends strange local girl Ferelith, but Ferelith has plans of her own. This is intercut with an account (told in diary entries) of an experiment in 1798 to find proof if God and the afterlife exists or not.
This is told in chapters comprising Ferelith's POV in first past, 3rd omni (present tense) mostly from Rebecca's POV and the diary entries (typeset on a grey background). It's pretty effective ane economically told story (around 50k words at my estimate). Sedgwick handles the continuing exposition very well, though in places this is a little contrived. (We're not told the reasons for Rebecca and her father's being in the village until about halfway through.) The 1798 sequences are a little slow to start, but build up nicely, especially when we learn the details of exactly what the experiment entails - and it's gruesome.
As for the central theme of whether or not there is an afterlife, Sedgwick leaves this open, though he provides an ending which subverts his narrative in ways I'll leave you to find out.
On the whole, impressed and I'd like to read more of Sedgwick's work.
Currently reading a YA by Joyce Carol Oates, Freaky Green Eyes.