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Title: Maximum Security
Author: Robert Muchamore
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 277
Published: 2005
When CHERUB agent James Adams is offered an alternative to the dull recruitment missions his friends have been assigned, he accepts without hesitation. With the help of his younger sister, Lauren, and an older agent named Dave Moss, his task will be to infiltrate a maximum security prison and befriend the incarcerated son of an elusive arms dealer, before breaking him out in the hope of following him back to his mother. The prison in question is only a young offender's institution, but James soon realises that he may have bitten off more than he can chew. He will need all his training to survive the dog-eat-dog hierarchies of Arizona Max, and to outwit the armed guards and police officers who consider him a real prisoner.
After getting off to an impressive start with The Recruit and Class A, Robert Muchamore's bestselling CHERUB series hits something of a stumbling block in Maximum Security. The first few chapters are particularly unimpressive. Muchamore's usual, punchy style is dragged down by extra padding, and our reintroduction to James – a rather unoriginal brawl at a bowling alley – is punctuated by clichés and exaggerations. Lauren's basic training, despite thrusting readers into a bleak Alaskan snowfield, seems to have none of the gruelling boot-camp charisma that James' ordeal did. By the time a suitably challenging task does present itself, the reader's interest will be somewhat dampened. Perhaps Muchamore's editor has adopted a more lenient stance following the success of his first two books.
Fortunately, the novel improves as it warms up. The standout, tried and true features of the series are more than enough to save this instalment, particularly the grit and authenticity imparted by Muchamore's research. This novel is probably worth reading just for its accessible insight into life in a young offender's prison. The usual grim glimpses into the characters' flaws and failings help to make it even more convincing, particularly where Curtis Oxford is concerned, and once the break-out gets rolling, there are enough twists and turns to make for an absorbing thriller.
Muchamore does not pull free from his flaws completely. Perhaps the most glaring problem is the ease with which the breakout occurs. If all 'maximum security' prisons in the USA are this easy to escape from, there is little wonder that crime is such a problem there. Then there is James' relationship with Vaughn Little, which might have tugged on the heartstrings if the exact same trick hadn't already been used in the previous book with Keith Moore. These faults are disappointing, but they are nothing that the momentum of the series will not sustain.
It may not be one of the stronger CHERUB novels, but Maximum Security spins a tight, engaging yarn in under three hundred pages, and the fans should have no trouble devouring it. Thankfully, Muchamore appears to be defying the common trend; so far, his books are getting shorter instead of longer.
Title: The Little Stranger
Author: Sarah Waters
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 501
Published: 2009
When a country doctor is called to Hundreds Hall – a decaying mansion in Warwickshire – to attend to an ill servant, he finds her sickness to be merely a feigned reaction to her surroundings. Alone in the intimidating servants' quarters, she has almost become convinced that a supernatural presence inhabits the house. As Dr Faraday comes to know the Hall's inhabitants more closely, he sees that its ruin does indeed seem to be eroding their lives, especially that of Roderick, the young, crippled master of the house, who struggles with the burden of the estate's finances. Over the course of his many visits, however, Faraday is forced to confront the possibility that the many strange occurrences at Hundreds may be the result of something more sinister and elusive.
Is there a ghost at Hundreds Hall? This is the question left hanging over the reader at the conclusion of Sarah Waters' latest novel, The Little Stranger. I, for one, remain unconvinced; not fully prepared to accept the possibility, nor to dismiss it outright. Like Dr Faraday, I am determined to cling to my rationalist perspective and avoid jumping to conclusions. Many other readers, I am sure, will disagree, and this is perhaps the novel's greatest strength: its ability to tread the threshold of proof between the explainable and the supernatural, compelling its readers to wrestle with their own half-formed opinions and conclusions.
Unfortunately, the majority of this 'literary meat' is confined to the final two hundred pages of the novel, and even then, it is fairly thinly spread. To reach it – along with other interesting aspects, such as Faraday's mulish, almost treacherous determination in pursuing both Caroline and logical solutions to every mystery – readers will have to wade through an unbelievable amount of padding. Waters seems to enjoy hammering the decay of the house and estate to no end, robbing the novel of the brevity and subtlety it may otherwise have possessed. To an audience mired in endless text, this story can often feel like little more than an empty tragedy.
The Little Stranger is the kind of book that I would love to see reimagined as a novella: a potent experiment in how easily we are willing to suspend our disbelief when reading, and how we might apply our reasoning differently in a real world scenario. In this format – somewhere around the size of Alan Bennet's The Uncommon Reader, in my mind – I could see it as a volume I might pass on to friends in the hope of discussing their reactions, as well as all those literary touches that Waters would have reduced to sharp little references. One does not need to spend five pages exploring a building site, for example, to understand her point about the new England's plebeian multitudes breaching the gates of Hundreds. As it is, there is simply not enough material here to be spread across the epic, over-rendered novel that Waters has envisaged. The writing may be quite transporting, but it is easy to become fed up with the destination.
Title: Class A
Author: Robert Muchamore
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 295
Published: 2004
When James Adams fails a routine training exercise and becomes caught up in a fight with fellow agents Kerry and Bruce, his summer holiday in the Mediterranean islands is cut short. Fortunately, the rigid discipline at CHERUB – a covert, underage branch of British Intelligence – is eased after two weeks to allow James to prepare for his next mission. His task will be to befriend Junior Moore, the rebellious son of cocaine dealer Keith Moore. Despite the efforts of hundreds of police officers and agents, Moore has evaded prosecution for years. Now Britain's largest drug-busting operation has turned to CHERUB to dig out the evidence they need.
It's quite a relief, as an adult, to come back to the books you loved as a teenager and discover that you still enjoy them as much as you ever did – because quite apart from being pulse-pounding, page-turning thrillers, they're actually well-written. Reluctant and discerning readers alike will get a kick out of Class A: the second novel in Robert Muchamore's ever-expanding CHERUB series. Muchamore has clearly done his homework on this instalment; his fiction owes much of its grit and authenticity to the convincing foundation of facts that underpins it. The choice of subject matter – illicit drugs – is quite appropriate for this highly addictive series, and is skilfully handled by the author. Young readers are likely to come away genuinely discouraged from using cocaine, without feeling at all preached-at, as Muchamore manages to steer well clear of didacticism and preserve his protagonist's bad-boy charm at the same time.
James Adams, our thirteen-year-old hero, is a big part of what makes these novels so readable. His character is a deft balancing act between the guy every teenager can relate to and the guy every teenager wishes he was. As such, the mix of empathy and envy he evokes will keep readers riveted to the page for hours. Through James, they can dream themselves vicariously into Muchamore's irresistible world of cars, girls, martial arts and good old friendship and adventure.
As the characters of James and his friends continue to develop, Muchamore takes the opportunity to balance all the excitement and peril with a deepening exploration of their relationships with each other. The interaction between James and Junior Moore, for example, has moments of particular poignancy, which land where the exhilarated reader will seldom expect them. The final chapter may feel a little contrived, but until then, this story's emotional layer is managed with remarkable control, providing that last ingredient to round out the novel.
Readers who were enthralled by The Recruit will devour Class A, which is just as enjoyable, if not more so. Those who can resist going on to the next instalment will be rare indeed. After all, why stop at two?
Title: The Recruit
Author: Robert Muchamore
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 329
Published: 2004
Twelve-year-old James Choke looks all set to wind up in prison as an adult. Raised by a professional shoplifter and her abusive boyfriend, his propensity to violence and vandalism has only been aggravated by his mother's sudden death. His situation in a government home looks bleak – until he wakes up one morning a mysterious facility, to be offered a place at an organisation known only as CHERUB. If he can pass his entrance tests and survive basic training, he'll become one of two hundred and eighty agents, all under the age of seventeen, to take on undercover missions for British Intelligence. The premise of the programme: a criminal will never suspect that children are spying on them.
Aspiring teenage fiction authors take note: if you want to rake in the fans, this is how to do it. Robert Muchamore's CHERUB series has amassed a formidable worldwide following, and one need only open up a copy of The Recruit – the book that started it all – to see why. Muchamore plays shamelessly on every thirteen-year-old boy's closeted longing to be a secret agent. No matter how many times our protagonist, James, is battered, bruised, drowned or nearly killed in training or on missions, readers will still fantasise themselves into his boots, because to be him would be the coolest thing ever. From the descriptions of his former bedroom – so loaded with gaming consoles that 'it looked like a bomb had gone off in Toys R Us' – to the campus full of karate-kids whose job it is to break into terrorists' houses and smash up furniture, every aspect of this novel is hardwired to scream 'teenage guy's dream'.
As fast-paced thrillers go, Muchamore's writing is top-notch. He stumbles a little when it comes to realistic dialogue, but nowhere near enough to unglue his readers from the page. With the help of some convincing (but not cumbersome) background information, a cast of likeable supporting characters and a smattering of brisk humour – all delivered via bite-sized chapters packed with punchy sentences – The Recruit goes from readable to downright addictive without a moment's pause, especially where basic training and the CHERUB campus are concerned.
Once James departs on his first mission, the page-turning power wanes a little, but with so much momentum behind it, The Recruit is virtually unstoppable. What Muchamore gives us in the final few chapters is a somewhat sobering reminder of his novel's realism. For all its action-packed charisma, this miniature portrait of intelligence work is coloured with a complexity and depth that complete the book very nicely.
The hype is fully justified; Robert Muchamore's first CHERUB novel will grab you, thrill you and leave you eager for more. It's a good thing the series shows no signs of running out any time soon.
Title: The White Tiger
Author: Aravind Adiga
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 321
Published: 2008
When Balram Halwai, the 'White Tiger' in the jungle of modern India, hears that the Chinese Premier intends to visit Bangalore to investigate its entrepreneurial successes, his interest is instantly piqued. Sitting beneath the chandelier in his 150-square-foot office, he resolves to dictate a series of letters to the Premier, telling his own life story: how he escaped the abject poverty of his family's village to become one of the country's most skilful entrepreneurs. It is a tale of deception, betrayal and murder, and one that will expose the startling relationship between India's rich and poor castes. Only the rarest of men have broken free of this bond; a bond which Balram refers to as 'The Rooster Coop'.
Perhaps you've heard it said that India is the world's next superpower: a nation of economic and technological progress that will soon succeed Western countries on the world stage. If so, Aravind Adiga's debut novel The White Tiger might make you think twice. Winner of the Booker Prize in 2008, this novel is a vicious, literary exposé of the delusion of 'progress' in modern India. Our narrator, Balram, splits the country into two halves: an 'India of Darkness' and an 'India of Light'. While Adiga's evocation of the poverty in the former is brutally vivid, it is his portrayal of the latter that will really grab his readers' attention. The India of his novel is a society that functions with mechanical amorality, where rich and poor alike are so habituated to the dog-eat-dog corruption that nobody thinks to question the status quo.
For all its atmospheric bustle, the novel is filled with the empty promise of change; a feeling that our narrator only partially acknowledges. Having titled himself 'The White Tiger', he views his own rise to the top of the food chain with a satisfaction that Adiga quietly subverts. As the wheels of this society continue their foul cycles – crime, poverty, betrayal – the reader comes to realise that its progress is not progress at all, and that the jungle will always be just that: a jungle.
As engaging as the subject matter is, it is Balram's narration above all that gives this study of modern India its twisted charisma. His straight-to-the-bone comments about everything from religion to democracy to the behaviour of Westerners will elicit wry smiles from the toughest of readers. Somehow, these 'life lessons' manage to be amusingly oversimplified and remarkably incisive at the same time. Whether you love him or hate him – or an indecisive mix of the two, as is more probable – the way Balram keeps the novel speeding along is difficult to resist.
Eye-opening on so many levels, The White Tiger is literature as it should be: topical, memorable and completely readable. Adiga's densely packed portrait of Indian society unravels in the mind for days afterwards. If it is half the country he paints it to be, urgent intervention is definitely called for.
Title: Hamlet: A Novel
Author: John Marsden
Genre: Young Adult
Pages: 228
Published: 2008
When Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is visited by the ghost of his late father, the king, he is unsure exactly what to think. The apparition has charged him to avenge its own murder at the hands of Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, who has now taken both the dead king’s throne and wife for himself. Perhaps, however, this ghost is a trick sent by the devil. How can Hamlet be sure of the right course of action? As he puzzles over the murder he has been instructed to commit, his friends and family begin to notice a change in his behaviour and manner. Perhaps he is losing his mind – but then again, perhaps he has always been a little different from other boys his age. Not even his best friend, Horatio, can be entirely sure.
In the style of Shakespeare’s most famous play, the very first words of John Marsden’s Hamlet: A Novel take the form of a question – but unlike its predecessor, this new adaptation prefers to cut straight to the chase. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ asks Horatio – and he may as well be asking the reader directly. Rather than plumbing the depths of Hamlet’s mind to resolve this puzzle of a prince, Marsden begins with the perspectives of surrounding characters, adding layers to his character study, and inviting us to find our own conclusions.
The true genius of this novel lies in Marsden’s portrayal of a Hamlet predating any encounter with his father’s ghost; a Hamlet that Shakespeare’s five-act dramatic snapshot cannot show us. Marsden’s Hamlet is a boy who has ‘always been strange’, one who has always pondered life and death and enjoyed baffling those around him, and whose madness might simply be the fabricated identity of a neglected teenager. Where is the line between philosophy and insanity? The original chapters of Marsden’s novel capture this ambiguity brilliantly. Construe Hamlet as you will; like the knife that he contemplates picking up, or the ‘to be or not to be’ dichotomy of his soliloquy, it all comes down to choice.
While the two Hamlets blend seamlessly, however, the voices of our two narrators do not. There are times where Marsden sets aside the originality of his own interpretation and resorts to merely translating the original text, taking whole speeches and conversations and simplifying them for the reader. Sometimes it works, but all too often, the words feel incongruous. Rephrased Shakespeare still reads like Shakespeare. The style, structure and expression of the dialogue remain too elaborate to mesh with the modern thought-processes that Marsden has given his characters: a Hamlet who plays football with his mates and a Horatio who fantasises about the palace servant girls. The mismatched prose divides the scenes in this book between two narrative voices – Marsden’s scenes and Shakespeare’s scenes – and though they may alternate, these two voices can never quite seem to blend successfully.
The stand-out sections, especially in the first sixty pages, belong to Marsden, even if they are hampered by such typical flaws as his failed attempts to show us how well he understands the adolescent mind. (Teenage readers are less likely to feel understood than creeped out at the explicit descriptions of Hamlet and Ophelia’s sexual urges.) As the novel progresses, however, Marsden’s voice becomes somewhat lost along the way, and the sum of his writing amounts, at best, to a decidedly odd and unique little book.
Title: The Ask and the Answer
Author: Patrick Ness
Genre: Young Adult
Pages: 519
Published: 2009
Struggling under the harsh regime of New World's self-appointed president, Mayor Prentiss, Todd and Viola find themselves separated, forbidden even from seeing each other. Todd is put to work as a slave driver, managing a workforce of imprisoned Spackle, while Viola is apprenticed to Mistress Coyle, a healer who seems quietly opposed to the president's tyranny. As supplies of the Noise cure are recalled, and segregation rules become stricter, Viola begins to notice curious changes in Mistress Coyle, as well as several of the other healers. An uprising is close at hand – but deciding right from wrong in the chaos to come will be even more difficult than staying alive.
To say that Patrick Ness has set a high bar for himself would be a mammoth understatement. His machine gun, stream-of-consciousness writing wowed readers and critics alike when The Knife of Never Letting Go hit shelves in 2008, partly because it was unlike anything else ever seen in its genre. To readers who have learned to expect the unexpected, The Ask and the Answer may elicit a feeling of 'Here we go again', as Todd's narration, which was so radically original a year ago, returns for round two. Ness wastes no time, however, in reminding us why he writes the way he does. For vividness, impact and readability, this prose is nigh on unbeatable. With its terse phrasing and rapid-fire paragraphs, it captures not only visual images, but pace and rhythmic imagery as well. Never before has there been such an effective way to describe a fistfight, or the aftermath of an explosion. As prose goes, it's sheer genius, and readers will wonder why all thrillers aren't written this way.
As if the writing were insufficient to make this book completely engrossing, Ness has packed the plot with the same amount of action and twists and, more importantly, the same thematic depth that captivated readers in the prequel. The Ask and the Answer is a fascinating portrait of society on the brink of chaos, where power is as tenuous as morality, and the greater good is often eclipsed by the means used to achieve it. Ness juggles right and wrong with impressive skill before seeming to throw them out of the window altogether. Ironically, the depth of ethical and political comment produces the novel's only flaw: it seems more than a little incongruous when Ness tries to find that rock of moral constancy in the middle of all the turmoil – because this is a children's book, after all.
Don't be fooled by its bulk; like the Noise of New Prentisstown, this is one page-turner you won't so much read as telepathically absorb. Every bit of Ness' storytelling goes straight to the head and stays there, punching out image after image of his gritty dystopia. I look forward to seeing the tension ratcheted up yet again in the trilogy's finale: Monsters of Men.
