Chilling tale of a divide

Young Adult Fiction: Although Malorie Blackman had been a successful author of children's books for some 10 years it was not…

Young Adult Fiction: Although Malorie Blackman had been a successful author of children's books for some 10 years it was not until the publication of her Noughts & Crosses in 2001 that her work began to attract the attention of a readership beyond her primary target audience.

The originality of this novel lay in its invention of a world in an alternative reality to our own, in which conventional polarities of white dominance and black subjection are reversed. Here, the "Noughts" are white, the "Crosses" black; the former are the victims of all manner of social and political discrimination, the latter in a state of apparently permanent privilege and control.

As a young adult fable which challenges orthodox thinking on the subject of racism it remains a passionate, powerful and often disturbing text.

Blackman's new novel, a sequel which reintroduces us to the world of "Noughts" and "Crosses" and to its principal characters, is an even more chilling performance, with several scenes, particularly of violence, which genuinely merit being described as shocking. With Callum, her "Nought" lover , now hanged as a terrorist, 18-year-old "Cross" Sephy is left to bring up their mixed-race baby daughter, Callie Rose, and to establish some form of rapprochement, both with Callum's family and her own. While all of these are demanding tasks, they become of comparative insignificance to the narrative in which Sephy is to be embroiled with Jude, Callum's brother. Here is someone utterly ruthless in his determination to gain revenge for his brother's execution and to focus this desired revenge on Sephy, perceived as being responsible for Callum's death.

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In tracing Jude's cold, sinister moves towards the attainment of his revengeful ambition, Blackman has created a figure of truly awe-inspiring malevolence.

Her account of his short-lived relationship with Cara, the "Cross" woman who, he intends, will provide him with the money to finance his scheming, is a masterly study of seductive manipulation. The juxtaposition of sexuality and violence which marks the end of the affair is almost sickening in its aggression without, however, seeming merely gratuitous: it is not just part of what Jude is, but what he totally is.

As his machinations against Sephy proceed, their contribution to her deteriorating mental condition make for what must be some of the most harrowing pages in any young adult novel.

The "rainbow child" of Sephy and Callum, celebrated not only in the song her mother composes for her but also in Blackman's division of her novel into seven sections, each named after a separate rainbow colour, stands apart in her unknowing innocence from all of this adult duplicity and betrayal.

We shall have to wait for the concluding volume of the trilogy to see whether something hopeful has indeed been born out of such bleakness and despair. Meanwhile, readers keen to catch up on some of Blackman's earlier work for younger children will welcome the Corgi paperback reissues (priced £4.99 each) of titles such as Hacker, Thief!, Pig-Heart Boy, A.N.T.I.D.O.T.E. and Dangerous Reality.

• Robert Dunbar is Head of English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathmines, Dublin