Carnegie Review - Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge

Cuckoo Song opens with the awakening of eleven year old Triss, who after a near-drowning has gaps in her memory, and also, somehow, in herself. Her little sister, Pen, knows she’s not right, and hates her for it. So do her dolls. And her overanxious parents are increasingly suspicious, which leads Triss to investigate what happened on the day of the accident at the pool known as ’the Grimmer … black as perdition and narrow as a half-closed eye'.

Cuckoo Song is a changeling story with a twist; it is told from the perspective of the changeling herself. But the twists don’t end there. Its characters are rarely who they initially seem, forcing Triss to rapidly change her allegiances. The readers loyalties change too, as the characters' competing ideas of what is right and good is explored, and how far they’ll go in following them is exposed.

The world these characters inhabit also twists, from the evocative 1920’s England of the opening, to the increasingly creepy magical structures built within it. And the theme of building extends throughout the story, with characters including a menacing architect and the mysterious Shrike, who animates objects into living beings, to the themes of rebuilding a family after betrayal and building a life after the death of another, or of oneself.

This is a long book, and the tension mounts gradually in the first quarter, until eventually taking off at breakneck speed. But throughout, Cuckoo Song is filled with rich folklore and the unique, descriptive flair of Hardinge, a multi-award winning children’s novelist.

Reviewed by Claire McCauley

‘The Wall’ - William Sutcliffe - Carnegie Review 2014

When Josh loses his football and heads off down a tunnel to try to retrieve it he emerges in what seems to be a different world.

But the world Josh has entered is no fantasy world – it’s subtly done so that the place Josh has entered is not mentioned by name until the story is well underway. But Josh lives in Amarias, an Israeli settlement in the West bank behind the 'Separation Fence' ('The Wall') and the tunnel takes him into the world of the Palestinians.

It’s a dangerous place, but Josh is intrigued by it and drawn to it, wanting to discover more, in the way boys approaching manhood will start to want to leave domestic safety and explore the big wide world.

Every time he comes back he learns a little more about the lives of people who live so close to him and yet so apart, yet puts himself in danger.

He starts a chain of events that threaten lives on both sides of the fence, but might just get him killed. It’s a fast-paced exciting story, but not without the introspection that allows Josh to work out that the situation is not at all as it had been told to him.

‘The Wall’ was published in both adult and children’s editions and is both an adventure novel and a coming of age story where a boy begins to see the world around him with fresh eyes and all its moral uncertainties. The difficulty he faces is trying not to simply repeat the behaviour of parents – to be part of the generation who stops the war and who makes a difference.

It is surprising, intelligent, heartbreaking, and beautifully told. I was completely blown away by this brilliantly told coming-of-age tale which will leave you with shredded nails but hope in your heart.

We asked William Sutcliffe what was his favourite thing about his shortlisted book: 'My favourite thing about “The Wall” is that it is designed to work as a political novel for adults about a real place, while also making sense for teenage readers as a dystopian novel in a setting that could be entirely fictional.'

‘Liar & Spy’ by Rebecca Stead - Carnegie review

This is a deceptively short and simple tale of the new friends Georges make when he has to move home. But it is actually a clever and sophisticated piece of storytelling in that most of the intrigue of the tale is in what is left unsaid, rather than what appears on the page.

When Georges moves house he makes friends with Safer, who live upstairs. Safer is homeschooled and is getting interested in the mysterious activities of one of the other residents of the apartments.

Georges gets drawn into Safer’s schemes, but things start to unravel as Safer starts to put greater demands on this new friendship in this this quirky, original story.

Books for children are often very plot-driven, with straightforward storylines, but in very few words, Rebecca Stead weaves several plotlines and plays with the reader’s understanding of what is going on.

Georges is a complex character, dealing with difficulties at home and at school. Rebecca Stead subtly plays with perspective on some of the power struggles that go on in children’s relationships and it is only as things are slowly revealed that the reader can understand

It’s a great story about standing up for ourselves. Why do we let the bullies make up the rules and why do we play them, is the central question of this really delightful and intriguing tale which is never short on surprises.

‘Rooftoppers’ by Katherine Rundell - Carnegie review

Baby Sophie is rescued from a sinking ship and, grows up believing that her mother died in the shipwreck.

But when he slightest of clues means there is a chance of tracking down her mother, Sophie, and scholarly Charles, who has brought her up in London, head to Paris in search of the truth, and the start of an out-and-out adventure story.

Sophie and Charles are used to staying one step ahead of the authorities, as the eccentric way Charles has looked after Sophie means she is only a step away from being taken to an orphanage.


But in Paris Sophie finds helps in her impossible quest from an unexpected quarter – from a bunch of children she meets who scrape a living on the Paris rooftops. Now on the run from police, Sophie sees a way she can still search for her mother. But first she must learn to scale ancient buildings in the dark, must learn to tightrope and to win the trust of the Rooftoppers.

It’s a magical tale, of children getting together to help each other and has a feel of a fairytale about it. But the thing that surprises on every page is the imaginative writing. Katherine’s way of telling the story, her fantastically imaginative word play, means there is plenty to enjoy and delight.

It’s in a great tradition of storytelling. It has huge appeal and, from the children I’ve talked to about their Carnegie experiences this year, it is the book people have most been pleased to have discovered through the shadowing.

It’s a great story about being yourself, not fitting in and a theme of believing the impossible. Great to have such an enjoyable, uplifting and well-written story for younger readers on the list.

We asked author Katherine Rundell what was her favourite thing about her shortlisted book.

"My favourite thing about Rooftoppers is the night-time tightroping scene, when Sophie walks across a rope high above Paris. I've always loved tightroping and wire-walking, but imagining what it might actually be like gave me unexpected jabs of dizziness. It took seven or eight rewrites to get that scene as close to right as I could make it, but it's now one of my favourite things I've written."

'Blood Family' by Anne Fine - Carnegie review

It opens like a thriller, digs deep emotionally and tackles contemporary issues without either dumbing down, over-sensationalising or making a melodrama out of serious subjects.

This year Anne Fine’s ‘Blood Family’ definitely seems to have been the one on the Carnegie shortlist where the content has both surprised and shocked.

‘Blood Family’ is a modern-day story about Eddie, a boy with plenty of problems to fill a book. We meet Eddie, traumatised and imprisoned, aged seven, when the police arrive at his home to rescue Eddie and his mother from a violent relationship.

The intensity of this opening makes for a disturbing start, a menace that never lets up. Yet, however much Eddie’s world seems apart from our own, we get drawn in to understand, which is a great testament to Anne Fine’s concise, appealing writing and her characterisation of Eddie. But it’s the lean and no-nonsense way she handles some really tricky issues that really impressed me about this book.

The story, you have to say, is unusual in itself as a topic of a book for children. But it further stands out in that there are multiple points of view to Eddie’s story – teachers, social workers, foster carers, adoptive parents – and most of them are adults. All with a view, all terribly nice and doing the right thing. All of them are kindly and well-meaning. But none of them really able to understand Eddie.

It’s a downbeat view of how ill-equipped society is to try to rehabilitate children like Eddie, despite lots of very good intentions. And although we’d all like to think there are very few of them, the truth is they are in the headlines depressingly often. It’s strong stuff and definitely aimed at teenage and older readers and would certainly be just as suitable for adults. I felt I enjoyed it much more with my adult eyes than in trying to think how children would come at this story.

The violence isn’t notably worse than in a lot of young adult fiction, but the feeling Anne Fine creates, how she cleverly creates her reality, certainly makes it a story that will stay with you for a long time.

On being freed, Eddie finds it really difficult to relate to the world around him, yet he is sweet and a character easy to warm to.

If there is one thing that living with a violent father has taught him – it’s how to not make waves, how to make yourself almost disappear, how to pick up on signals and always, always say the right thing. So he clears the hurdles set by the social workers and ends up settled with a new family.

The psychiatrists and social workers disappear from Eddie’s life, congratulating themselves on a job well done. But Eddie’s troubles have hardly begun.

None of them have scratched the surface of how Eddie will behave when he starts to grow up and starts to think independently. Everything is there poised like a huge weight ready to topple down on him.

What you could call the second half of the book looses much of the adult viewpoint and gets more into its stride with Eddie, reaching an age of maturity and starting to question his early life. Then the wheels fall of his current, carefully constructed existence. Why did his mother never try to escape? Did she not think he was worth saving?

And the biggest question of all that truly comes to haunt Eddie – is he destined to repeat that violent behaviour? Is it somehow mapped onto his genes? If he is Harris’s son, can he stop himself turning into the monster his father became?

His adoptive family appear ill-equipped with what to expect. And as he has to keep visiting his mother, he can never start afresh and truly try to move on and forget his past. His wonderful sister is the only person who gets under the surface, but she becomes the target of his anger.

Without anyone noticing, Eddie, full of self-disgust, tries to blot out the fear and becomes dependent on alcohol, stealing to fund his habit, occasionally breaking into violence. Is he already walking in his father’s footsteps?

The descriptions of alcohol dependency and Eddie’s journey are finely described, not shying away from the truth, and although there is much to shock a sensitive reader, the violence is not written as entertainment. It is written as a read to provoke thought and discussion.

How easy it would have been to be gratuitous in situations, such as when Eddie realises one of the other inhabitants of his squat has died of an overdose. But this story isn’t using violence for entertainment, in the same way that it doesn’t make drug or alcohol abuse appear even slightly appealing.

There is plenty here that will surely provoke good book-group discussions. It’s about topics that crop up every day on the news. And, ultimately, through unstinting support, he conquers his demons.

Eddie’s voice, from damaged child to damaged adult and beyond, is a bravura piece of writing.