Never Evers by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison, review: Affecting tale of love on the ski slopes

Romance is seldom quite as starry-eyed as it can be at this level of teenage inexperience

Chaucer writing today about the potentially energising effects of sweet April showers could well say going on the school ski trip is a modern-day pilgrimage – for those pupils who can afford it. Such is the case in Never Evers, where 14-year-old boys and girls from two single-sex schools converge for a week’s snowboarding holiday in France. The air soon starts crackling with jokey self-dramatising, elaborate if mostly good natured put-downs and pigeon French (“Do you speak Anglais?”).

The joint-authors, both in their early thirties, are still near enough to the time when they became teenage sweethearts themselves to remember the highs and lows of first love. But while their previous novel, Lobsters, revolved around 18-year-olds intent on losing their virginity, the much younger teenage characters here are only interested in getting their first kiss. To that end, appropriate choice of wardrobe is agonised over and girls spend hours on their make-up. Wish-fulfilment and worst nightmares combine as romance beckons, then retreats before finally reaching some sort of stability before it is time to go home.

The story is told in turn by Matilda, universally known as Mouse, and same-age Jack. Each suffers from a chronic lack of self-confidence, on these pages still apparently a typical British affliction. Agonies of embarrassment occur, but never to a level of outright disaster. Mouse also has problems with misunderstandings engineered by a trio of classmates jealous of her former time at ballet school. But readers will know that she and Jack will still make it sooner or later. A raucous chorus of onlookers from both sides, offering bad advice and concocting ludicrous, self-defeating stratagems, ensures that any overall tacky sentimentality is always avoided.

Never Evers gets it title from those individuals anxious to break new ground, but with no idea what they are in for, in this case snowboarding. It is not a great novel but certainly a good one. Positivity reigns: the teachers are nice, pupils are for the most part friendly and the desire to mix it with the opposite sex as quickly as possible is constant, unquestioned and ever-exciting. Romance is seldom quite as starry-eyed as it can be at this level of inexperience. Teenagers lucky enough to have gone on their own ski trips will surely relish revisiting moments that could also have happened to them. Older readers may just be left with sighs of nostalgia. But both parties are surely bound to enjoy this lively and affectionately imagined novel.

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