(continued)
Andy Mulligan's Trash was the first YA on the list. It's set in a foreign city (inspired by but not identified as Manila) where corruption and poverty are rife and slum dwellers scrabble through rubbish heaps - and three boys find something they shouldn't. A twisty turny story is told in the first person with multiple narrators, changing with the chapters, some of the voices those of adults.
Ali Lewis's Everybody Jam sounds like the title of a dance track, but the meaning is more prosaic. (It's set in the Australian outback, inspired by Lewis's experiences helping out on a cattle farm, and the title is what the local Aboriginals call apricot jam because everybody likes it.) It's narrated by thirteen year old Danny, who has to deal with the death of his brother the year before, the annual cattle muster and the fact that his fourteen year old sister is pregnant by a father she refuses to disclose. Add to the mix a hapless young English girl, hired to help out... This has a lot going for it in terms of voice (lots of Aussieisms) and a strong sense of place, but it tends to fall apart into a series of episodes rather than a unified narrative. It also seems oddly distanced: the presumably autobiographical character of the English girl is referred to more often as "The Pommie" rather than her name (Liz) and much of what she says is in reported speech rather than direct speech. N.B. This novel is 12+ according to the judges but it does push at the limits of that age rating. It has a "Not suitable for younger readers" warning on the back, due to one "fuck" (the only one on the entire shortlist), sexual references and such episodes as a ball fight using the testicles from castrated bulls.
Annabel Pitcher's My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece also deals with grief. Five years ago, Jamie's older sister Rose died, blown up by an Islamic terrorist bomb (heavy stuff for older MG). Now Jamie is ten and his older sister Jasmine, Rose's twin, is fifteen. Their mother has left and they live with their father, who has sunk into alcoholism and racist loathing of Muslims, who he considers all terrorists. At a new school, Jamie becomes friends with another outsider, a girl - Sunya, the only Muslim in the school. This is a funny, moving, well-observed novel let down by a rather glib way of resolving its issues. That said, it's a good alternative bet for the Medal. Pitcher uses the rather odd device of leaving out quotes for dialogue, rendering speech in italics instead. The edition I read had a bonus short story called "Jasmine", a short piece from the viewpoint of that character.
Finally, Ruta Sepetys's Between Shades of Gray deals with war, and specifically the deportations of Lithuanians to gulags in Siberia during World War II. The novel describes the long journey and the frequent hardships fifteen-year-old Lina, an aspiring artist, and her mother and brother face as they struggle to survive the hard work of a labour camp, the lack of food, the constant fear of reprisal from the Soviet troops and finally the harsh Siberian Arctic winter, all vividly described (much of it from accounts of some of Sepetys's relatives) and frequently harrowing. This has to be a good each ways bet.
Having read the list, I would say that the strongest contenders have to be Ness, Pitcher and Sepetys. But while I have reservations about some of the books on the list, I did enjoy all of them. Let's see if I'm right. The Medal is awarded on this coming Thursday, 14 June.
