Lara Harte seems determined to tell us more about teenage angst than we ever wanted - or, perhaps, deserved - to know. The narrator of Losing It, Merle, has been drinking, smoking and heading to all the right parties since she was 12, courtesy of her glamorous older sister Corinne. As the book opens, Merle is about to start third-level education and Corinne is working in London, but when the latter comes home and attempts suicide for no apparent reason, Merle drops out of college and embarks on a search for the awful secret which, she is convinced, has blighted not just Corinne's life but that of her two school friends Rob and Shane.
So far so thriller, and, indeed, Harte gives her plot a thriller-like initial spin, cranking up the tension as Merle pursues the truth via the hints and half-hints of what she describes as "our web of estranged complicity". But as the reader swiftly discovers, the forward momentum is illusory. These are the sort of clued-in, intelligent kids who, once upon a time in fiction, would have been excited about the future and brimming with energy, plans and dreams. Instead, our cheery quartet spend their time cutting themselves (a razor blade is Merle's weapon of choice for her own arms, while Corinne prefers candles and cigarette lighters) and cutting themselves off. Around and around each other they slip and slide, obsessed with "relationships" which are anything but, addicted to interminable discussions which function, not as an aid to communication, but as another brick in the wall of alienation. Merle, we are constantly told, is a talented guitarist - but she is totally devoid of any kind of ambition, let alone the sort of goofy enthusiasm about music which drove a previous generation and which is so well expressed in, say, Nick Hornby's High Fidelity.
To be fair, Merle is somewhat preoccupied with the need to stop her increasingly incoherent sister from successfully topping herself, and she finally manages to force the confrontation between Corinne, Rob and Shane which reveals the long-buried trauma at the centre of the story. No prizes for guessing what it is - but in setting out to tell the story of four youngsters touched by a moment of tragedy, Lara Harte has taken the pulse of a generation. Her debut novel, First Time, was about a girl hurtled too quickly into adulthood. Something of the kind has happened to the characters in Losing It; they may be street smart, articulate and able to hold their drink, but underneath it all they're scared kids who desperately need help and have no idea how to ask for it. This, needless to say, does not make them sympathetic, particularly to the adult reader. Losing It is a vulnerable, maddening book - at times, you don't know whether to hug it or hurl it across the room. If Lara Harte is the voice of the contemporary teenager, a lot of people are going to wish for a return to the days when children were seen and not heard.
Arminta Wallace is an Irish Times journalist
