And, of course, I had to buy it.
Now I've know about Paula Rawsthorne ever since the 2010 SCBWI Undiscovered Voices competition results were announced. Paula was one of the winners. (She was interviewed about the experience here.) Less than two years on, her debut novel, The Truth About Celia Frost is available, which, I guess, is what that competition is all about. And watch this space because the 2012 results will be announced soon and who knows what more literary goodies that might bring.
But back to Celia Frost. This is what the blurb on the back says:
Celia Frost is a freak. At least that's what everyone thinks. Her life is ruled by a rare disorder that means she could bleed to death from the slightest cut, confining her to a gloomy bubble of "safety". Nor friends. No fun. No life.
But when a knife attack on Celia has unexpected consequences, her mum reacts strangely - and suddenly they're on the run. Why is her mum so scared? Someone out there knows. And when they find Celia, she's going to wish the truth was a lie...
This is a fast-paced read which you can trip through at a fare old lick. I bought it on the way up to London for the Agents Party and read it both there and back again. And I can honestly say that for once I was sorry when the train arrived at my station and I had to stop reading about 170 pages in! By then I'd been skillfully lead up the garden path by Paula's writing, and was even priding myself on how smart I'd been by working it all out. I was pretty sure I knew how it would end, although there were a few tiny niggles that clearly needed to be resolved. So I was keen to read on to find out what Paula would do about them. Well. I got it all wrong and the niggles proved to be rather more important than I'd dreamed!
All of that might seem a bit unspecific as to the plot. So let me see if I can be more helpful. The book opens with Celia at school. We quickly pick up that this is one of many schools she has attended and that here, as always, she will be systematically shunned by everyone because of her strange disease. She will also be bullied. But she is a strong character and she is clearly starting to want to break out of her 'victim' status. So she faces up to the bully and the story really begins.
There is a fight. She is cut. Her body reacts unexpectedly. And enter Janice, the mum: neurotic, almost hysterical and we start to wonder whether she might be the one who is sick rather than her daughter. Janice sweeps Celia out of the hospital and they run away pitching up on a grim, gang-infested estate on the outskirts of a city. Here Celia comes face to face with more violence and meets Sol, the undersized youngest son of an Ethiopian refugee mother. Sol helps Celia start to live a normal life and in so doing initiates the disintegration of the tissue of lies that Janice has woven around Celia since she was a small child.
There's plenty of gritty reality to get your teeth into here. Sol's older brothers teeter on the brink of illegal behaviour. The private detective who has been hired by the mysterious Nemo to find Celia and her mother, has definitely overstepped the bounds. And the estate where both Sol and Celia live is riddled with gangs. And then there is the matter of the 'Truth'. I can't reveal it here, clearly, but suffice it to say that it leaves you thinking about society and ethics much in the same was as does Neal Shusterman's Unwind, although without quite so much shudder factor.
This is a great book for kids of both gender who want a fast paced book that will ask them to think a bit about some of the big issues facing us and them but never preaches or patronises. It's a superb debut novel and leaves me wondering what Paula might come up with next.
If you want your own copy please order via the link below and Amazon will make a small contribution to maintaining this blog.
I'm intrigued! - and good job of telling/not telling what it is really about. I like twists in the tail. Though, to be honest, nearly always figure them out. Sounds like a challenge to me....
ReplyDeleteI read this a while back - really enjoyed it too, and yes, I also 'had it all figured out' only to find that as usual, I couldn't have been more wrong. Really good fun to read.
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