The lives of many adolescents are filled with feelings and fears. Contemporary young adult literature contains a significant strain of books, dubbed problem novels, which reflects these concerns. The term problem novel brings to mind issue-driven books written to expose a situation with a clear solution. Suicide, a parent with a specific disease, or a student who has recently moved to a new town might be conflicts found in these novels. Some are, as the term suggests, a quick fiction fix to model answers. But in the more powerful stories, the subject fades into the background and the characters take over and wrestle with struggles that have always plagued human beings. Intensified by the additional poignancy of the coming of age years, these novels are written not just for teens, but for all who enjoy a complex and emotionally strong read. Adults and young adults can sample this strength in four recent contemporary novels.
Gillian Cross' Tightrope (Holiday House, $16.95; ages 11 and up) is an entire book filled with symbols that relate to the title. The main character is Ashley, a fourteen year old who walks a tightrope between caring for her disabled mother and juggling the rest of her life. Ashley, once a gymnast, finds release by inventing an alter ego named Cindy. Cindy sneaks out at night and balances on a tightrope while she indulges in her hidden passion of tagging, filling high blank walls with graffiti bearing the name of her metamorphosed self. At first, Ashley delights in the drama and the risk of being found out. But the mental tightrope Ashley enjoys stretches to the breaking point when she begins to receive anonymous, threatening letters written by someone who knows her true identity. Each chapter of this book ends with a short segment written by a resident of Ashley's neighborhood. These vignettes give clues about Ashley's stalker and a sense that much of the community lives in fear of the same perpetrator. Double meanings, suspense, and multiple perspectives lift this story beyond the level of an issue book.
Louise Plummer's A Dance for Three (Delacorte, $15.95; ages 11 and up) begins with the introduction of Hannah who is pregnant. This not a story about an unwed teen; Hannah's condition is only a backdrop for her sadness and desperate search for family and serenity. The depth and complexity of the main character's relationship with her mother and the author's slow unveiling of Hannah's troubles add unexpected and surprising psychological shifts. In the beginning, readers learn some of the obstacles Hannah faces. She is stunned by how her father "burped after a Saturday-night dinner and died seven minutes later." His death has ended the dance for three that was once her family, for Hannah's mother has changed dramatically. Hannah comforts herself in the arms of her boyfriend Milo and imagines that her pregnancy will result in a perfect family choreographed in a new dance for three. Instead, Milo denies the child is his and viciously strikes her. Hannah fears more and more that the madness that "runs in families and skips generations" is "taking hold inside her". As she describes events, readers sense her increasing instability. After cutting herself with a razor, Hannah is placed in a hospital where she lets a caring psychiatrist know that her mother hasn't left the house in two years and that she's been carrying responsibilities for them both. In an issue novel, the therapist might seem a cliched resolution, but here, Hannah needs someone to show her a truer picture of reality. Hannah's story is told not only through her recollections, but through the narration of her stable friend, Trilby, and Roman, Milo's brother. This trio of tellers makes up another dance of three who reveal the truths behind the facade.
E.R. Frank's Life is Funny (DK Ink, $17.95; ages 12 and up) finds power in its structure and its honest eloquent narratives. Eleven kids growing up in Brooklyn over a seven year period narrate short segments that spill into each other, creating a sense of wholeness. Their lives seem far from funny, their problems are overwhelming. Keisha fights in school, but tells no one that her biggest battle is stopping her brother Nick from "touching me on my privacy." Sonia struggles with being a good Muslim in a fast-moving American culture where everything seems improper to her parents until she feels her skin is "a brown eggshell, hiding the slimy mess of its insides." Unlike most of the others, Drew's family is rich, but he's "the Jag kid with the asshole father" who uses his wife as a punching bag. We come to care about these characters even though their predicaments, language, sexual openness and conditions made us uncomfortable at first. The author orchestrates the chorus of pain filled voices, turning raw language into an amazing symphony of truth.
Jacqueline Woodson's Miracle's Boys (Putnam, $15.99; ages 11 and up) is the story of three boys left alone after their mother's death. Lafayette, present when his mother, Miracle, died, feels like a snake with shed skin "but I hadn't grown new skin underneath... I was just blood and bones spreading all over the place ." Laf's older brother Charlie has been sent to a juvenile correction center after breaking into a store and Laf thinks somebody "scooped out his heart and sent the empty bitter rind of him home." Oldest brother Ty'ree, nicknamed St. Ty'ree, has given up MIT to be their guardian, but if Charlie messes up, they'll be sent to an aunt. There's a lot of pain in this book, but Woodson delivers it like an ode, strung together from lyrical images that reach inside readers as if to remind them that there is a beauty in grief. Miracle is dead, but she's left pictures "chiseled into" her boys and won't be forgotten because "she's too deep inside of us. " And in the end when they hang on to each other, the love she's created pulls them together.
What distinguishes these books? The characters aren't merely embodiments of an issue and the plots aren't one-liners. These are complicated, character-driven, credible novels which offer a compelling read to anyone who is, or has, struggled with the isolation of trying to hide fears, the confusion of understanding the conflicts and truths around them, and the search to find heroes, love, and hope.