Trouble: A memoir

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Sadly she doesn’t really develop over the course of the book. She stops wearing make up and reconnects with some friends that she used to hang out with (but only because the popular crowd have dumped her) but she doesn’t really develop. She doesn’t gain new insight, which is astonishing seeing as how her entire life has changed. We don’t find out her thoughts on impending motherhood. In fact, the only time her pregnancy is mentioned is when she has physical symptoms, like peeing and horniness. I've said before that I find British young adult contemporary novels to be much gritter than their American counterparts. Although I love the 'really cute' or 'really sad' contemporary novels that I tend to go for, Trouble is neither. It's a brilliantly written and wonderfully authentic and realistic novel to add to the top of the pile of this increasingly popular genre. It's also interesting to see just how different the two covers are. If cigarette smoke was removed from the cover for John Green's Looking for Alaska, I'd love to know what they'd make of sperm on the cover of Trouble! (I think it's a fantastic cover, by the way.). Trouble stands out because it does not shy away from the awkward, uncomfortable and often harsh reality of teenage life, but it's still funny and touching, with two endearing characters that you'll enjoy spending time with. This book made me cry in a coffee shop. Who would have thought that would happen with me. Brilliant book. Full review to come. :) One of my fascinations with Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 80s is how it became a place where different rules applied, where reality itself seemed up for grabs. Nowhere was this more the case than the “Provisional Republic” of South Armagh, AKA Bandit Country, with its handmade “sniper at work” signs and its community militias all surveyed by the watchtowers and helicopters of the British army. Toby Harnden’s book is a compulsively fascinating tour of this alternative universe. In the dark, in the light, always imagining her face, remembering her face in the moments before the accident. Her laugh. Her easy wave. How her wave had been the first thing about her that told him all he needed to know.

It is during the pretrial hearing, when all of this is revealed, that Dr. Sheringham's testimony also makes it crystal clear that the administration has fully sanctioned the abuse meted out upon Chay by Franklin and his cronies.SO. MUCH. FRIENDSHIP. This might have been one of the biggest ideas, and I loved it! It showed how much a true best friend can mean to us, and this was the aspect that really helped me. The platonic relationship between Hannah and Aaron made me realise so much about my own life, which was one fo the reasons I found this book so touching. It hit really close to home, and although this won't make it everyone's favourite book, I think it was really moving, and important for everyone. It was the stories they told, and the way they told them, that first got me interested in writing about those times. My father and his brothers were semi-literate, but they had such faith in language. Tellings of their times in Ireland were entirely questionable, and inevitably self-mythologising, yet there was something true in the way they owned their stories, relayed them in their own language – a polyglot of jokes, songs, random diversions, verbal sleight of hand, straight-up misinformation and pure folk poetry – that made me think of the art of storytelling as performative. I did like Aaron and I felt really bad for the terrible things that had happened to him, but he didn’t really seem to develop either. And I didn’t really understand why he offered to pretend to be the father of Hannah’s baby. It is explained, but I still didn’t really buy into it. And I definitely didn’t understand why his parents went along with it! This is a really sex positive story, for one about teenage pregnancy. There's a misinterpretation of a scene of being forced, which gets resolved into something's that is both sex positive, about enthusiastic consent, and champions boys who call peers on bad behaviour. Yes, there's examples of perfectly teenage behaviour, with lying about conquests and such, but that doesn't diminish the sex positivity.

Trouble, the debut novel from Non Pratt is totally breathtaking. This is definitely one of those incredibly rare books that you find every once in a while that totally blows you away and you know that it will stay with you for a long time afterwards. Aaron’s perspective throughout the book is what differentiated Trouble for me from an experience like Juno. True, Aaron is not actually the babydaddy—and while his volunteering of those services might seem far-fetched, the juxtaposition of his rising star with Katie’s falling one says a lot about how something like being pregnant shows you who your friends are. The subplot about Aaron’s “shadowy past” teeters on the brink of cliché but never quite goes over—and at the very least, it serves to avoid making him into a manic pixie dream boy whose only purpose is to be Hannah’s friend. I liked the way this was shown to be not true. It’s a really big issue for teenage girls today, and it was explored so well, if you want to look for the themes. It's another really important message that I took away from this book, and I think if you're willing to think about it a bit, it's really educational. Also, Hannah's self esteem and self worth is not dictated by these disgusting men. She knows it isn’t true, and that’s one of the reasons why I love this book so much.

Narratives in Northern Ireland are all about who is telling the story and what historical precedents they can muster in its defence: the Irish are born myth-makers. Country, then, is an inspired retelling of Homer’s Iliad set during the Troubles, and it fully engages with the performative tradition of Irish storytelling. This is Ireland as the eternal country. And how might you feel if you'd had a life like Chay's and found yourself behind the wheel in such circumstances? It had some good points. The author did a great job making the dialogue, social interactions and thought processes of the teenager characters realistic and relevant. There are countless people in the world actually like these characters. I often read YA where it feels like no-one on earth in any way resembles the characters we’re reading about. Of course, the fact it was set in an average area in the UK made it easier for my Irish self to relate to than some of the American stuff I read. Trouble is so amazing. I seriously can't praise it enough. I find it difficult accepting that this in Non Pratt's debut novel. It reads like she has been doing this for years. Her incredible writing completely captures you and pulls you in at the start and won't let you go until you have demolished the book. Trouble is told from split perspectives from our two lead protagonists, Hannah and Aaron. Non completely nailed split perspectives. Both characters voices were superb and there was no 'hang on who is speaking here' confusion that sometimes happens in split perspective novels. She completely nailed them both and made the characters voices so authentic. The writing really is phenomenal. Now, I know that Hannah’s decisions and reactions are realistic, and that people do stuff like this in real life, but she’s definitely not smart.