Ye gods! A wild review appears!
Glenda Millard's short novel overcomes several problems to stand as a thoughtful, poignant read for tens and up.
An urban dystopian future-war scenario may seem to be a full-house of cliché keywords for a contemporary YA novel, but Millard sensibly subverts the tropes to craft an original, often surprising, story. The first and most obvious example of her characters playing against type is their positioning in the fringes of society even before the bombs start dropping and the jackboots come marching in. Their displacement is accelerated by the conflict, but it remains for most of the book a distant phenomenon, far removed from the immediate plight of Millard's lovingly-crafted characters.
The book's central figure Skip, a young runaway and burgeoning artistic mind, immediately captures the imagination. Millard shows us the world, all pastel sunsets and smoky ruins, through a remarkable volume of creative description. Skip's insightful similes are disarming and effective in painting the artist's view of beauty and horror in the world. These exhaustive but not overbearing descriptions account for the book's relative brevity - at under 200 pages it's a slim, but not lightweight, read - as every page displays some new creativity and concentrated wonder.
Skip's fierce friendship with Billy, a proud, lost man, forms the heart of the story and is the most convincing relationship of the few that Millard sketches. Their interdependence, coupled with classic odd couple stubbornness, proves enduring and the only thing that either of them can hold on to in their devastated world. Some tropes are worth keeping, and Millard sagely keeps this most touching and hopeful of classsic children's literary traditions alive.
The book's one and only true misstep is its dénouement. This isn't as damaging to the impact of the story as it sounds, but particularly in a re-read it fails to ring true. The dilemma of the final dramatic characters, while brave, seems forced, which is a particular shame considering the grace with which other issues are confronted by Millard's prose. The closing imagery is as vivid as any other in the book but coming after the odd tonal changes introduced in the last chapters it doesn't have the impact of the earlier wonderful portrayals of Skip's world.
A recommended read, in spite of its flaws, and one that will stick in the memory. At least, the first three-quarters will.
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