Escape from the ghetto

From race riots to bullying, the themes of new teenage fiction may sound grim. But Nicholas Tucker admires the imagination of writers who transform them

Big moose Lake, a summer playground for wealthy New Yorkers, was also the scene of a notorious murder in 1906. In A Gathering Light (Bloomsbury, £12.99) Jennifer Donnelly links this crime to a coming-of-age story featuring Mattie, a bright 15-year-old local girl. She seems condemned to fulfil her dead mother's role of looking after the rest of her impoverished family instead of getting the education she pines for.

Life is tough, including all the details about trying to cope with bodily functions missing from the sagas of Laura Ingalls Wilder. But with the help of a sympathetic teacher and her own fascination with the written word, Mattie finally makes it. Too good to be true herself, fulfilling the role of fairy godmother as well as perfect older sister, there is still enough tough realism in her account to win over all but the most cynical of readers. Poignant quotations from letters written by the doomed Grace Brown to her no-good lover give extra weight to the first novel by an American writer of promise.

Bali Rai's The Crew (Corgi Books, £4.99) is set in a British urban ghetto teeming with drug-dealers, prostitutes, pimps and winos. Yet it still comes over as a generally upbeat story, because of the loyalty felt towards each other by the five members – three male and two female – of a self-supporting, multi-racial teenage gang, otherwise known as "the crew". Largely law-abiding, they still break every fictional rule about gang stories laid down since Emil and the Detectives.

Far from trying to do everything themselves, they regularly involve their parents and the local police in a desperate story about drugs money lost and found, abductions and finally murder. Although the crew itself always comes first, some love interest between members is allowed. The obligatory dog, always such a feature of these stories, is for once far more trouble than he is worth. Written in streetwise dialect, this is a jewel of a book, only flawed by some hectic over-plotting towards the end. The publisher's warning, "Not suitable for younger readers", should ensure the large sales it deserves.

Caught in the Crossfire (Dolphin, £4.99) is a timely novel from the prolific Alan Gibbons about the dangers of newly revived British racism following the threats of world terrorism. Not all books written about recent events succeed, and sometimes characters in this story merely seem to do what they are told rather than having an independent fictional life. But things pick up once the depressed Northern town of Oakfield has to cope with a dangerous race riot. Before that, a description of first love across town boundaries and a chilling account of how racial agitators get to work give this story lift-off whenever it threatens to put preaching before plot.

Margaret Mahy is a wonder, producing streams of titles that never fail to come off. Her latest book, Alchemy (Collins Flamingo, £4.99), contains her unique formula, whereby the psychological regularly finds echoes in the supernatural. A character who hears his lost father's voice within his head eventually meets the same father in an imaginary world when he most needs him. Teenagers are suddenly and unaccountably attracted to each other as if under a spell. Thoughts are read as if by magic; the experience of change and possession by another force reflects the way that adolescents in real life go through stages when they no longer truly know who they are. Against this dynamic background, Roland dumps his ordinary girlfriend in favour of mysterious Jess Ferret and finds himself inside another world of menace, magic and mystery. Occasionally scary, at other moments passionate, this story follows the same inner journey found in Mahy's previous masterpiece, The Changeover.

Nick Gifford's Piggies (Puffin, £4.99) is an ingenious variant on vampire stories. Young hero Ben finds himself transplanted to an otherwise normal, human world where he is the only one who does not drink blood. Branded a "feral" by his captors, he soon discovers they intend to preserve him as a delicious source of interesting new blood for the rest of his life (the book's cover is pretty revolting too!). Ben escapes to the company of other hunted ferals, but is recaptured and placed in a secure unit along with already resident "piggies", the name given to those wretched humans kept only for their blood.

Any analogy between all this and modern factory farming is entirely intentional. Ben finally escapes, leaving all the other piggies behind and readers with a possible bad conscience the next time they eat pork. Written by an author who himself keeps vampire bats for pets, this chilling story reads with all the power and demented logic of a thoroughly bad dream.

Graham Gardner's Inventing Elliot (Orion, £7.99) also has nightmarish qualities, this time set in the real world. Elliot, an unwilling and undersized teenager, is a new boy at the prestigious Holminster High. Badly bullied at his last school, he is determined to play it safe. But he soon discovers a world of vicious intimidation, ruled by the Guardians – a self-appointed committee of three. Although Elliot manages to keep out of their way, he sees the worst that they can do to others. He finally has to decide where he stands when invited to become a Guardian himself.

Modelled on Nineteen Eighty-Four, from which the Guardians take their ultimate aim of total control ruled by fear, this book has an undeniable paranoid appeal, particularly as the author insists that main events are based on personal experience. His very assured first novel may not please some parents or teachers looking for more positive messages, but for teenagers in search of a good wallow in someone else's depression, it can hardly be faulted. Readers still coming across actual bullying in their own schools will look in vain for any practical suggestions for help, however; any future editions should surely include the Childline phone number, if only on the jacket.

Nicholas Tucker is the author of the 'Rough Guide to Children's Books' (Penguin)