CHILDREN'S BOOKS 10-12-year-olds: Although "war stories" have long been a significant part of children's literature, it is only comparatively recently that they have begun to figure prominently in Irish writing for the young and, even more recently, that this has come to include fiction dealing with the events of 1916 and the years immediately following, writes Robert Dunbar
The six short stories in Gerard Whelan's excellent collection War Children (The O'Brien Press, €6.95) are our most impressive contribution to date to this particular genre. They depict their various young protagonists as puzzled observers of what goes on around them - "My feelings were all mixed up, and I didn't understand them," as one of them says - and in doing so are remarkably free from facile notions of "right" versus "wrong". They will impel their readers towards new questioning as to what "war" actually is and, in the Irish context, to what its legacy has been.
In its focus on children as refugees as a result of the second World War, Jenny Koralek's War Games (Egmont, £4.99) deals with what she calls at one point the "great raw wounds of loss and loneliness". Her story of a Czech boy called Hugo - his escape to England before his country is invaded by Hitler and his reception by his host English family - is tellingly played out against a background of the horrific contemporary developments on mainland Europe: an individual Jewish childhood spent in exile becomes part of a wider, much more sombre picture of racial and religious persecution. In its choice of theme and overall narrative tone and voice, this is more conventional and more didactic writing than Whelan's, but its picture of children entrapped in situations beyond their immediate comprehension of "dark things" in their world has its moments of genuine poignancy.
For Jack, the young hero of Kate Thompson's The Alchemist's Apprentice (The Bodley Head, £10.99), there is also a period of "long painful darkness" to be endured before full realisation strikes - realisation, that is, about the possible consequences of a life devoted to materialistic endeavour. Set in the early 18th century, this totally engrossing, beautifully paced novel traces Jack's travels in the world of alchemy, leading eventually to his having to confront the central dilemma of all engaged in its magic: is it gold in the hand or gold in the spirit that ultimately matters? With its strongly evocative sense of period and place, its ingenious plotting and its cast of richly eccentric characters, this is an outstanding achievement.
Evocation of linked times and settings contributes significantly also to the overall appeal of Mary Arrigan's Lawlor's Revenge (Collins, £4.99), where we move between an everyday contemporary Ireland and the convict colony of 1850s Tasmania. Uniting the two is Bron, a spirited young girl growing up in the former, who becomes involved in a time slip adventure which centres on the need to redress an act of injustice. The interplay between present and historical worlds is handled with assurance, cleverly counterpointed by recurring references to Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld.
Rather as the fantasy dimension to Bron's experiences grows out of her changing family circumstances, the starting point for Gyr's story in Grace Wells's Gyrfalcon (The O'Brien Press, €6.95) lies in what he designates "the terrible pain of his father's absence". As he settles with his mother and sister in an atmospherically re-created rural Ireland, Gyr's release from his unhappiness comes via his encounters with Finn MacCumhail and - in sequences charged with lyricism - via his growing empathy with the bird after whom his mother has named him. In tracing the boy's journey to the full freedom of flight, Wells has given us a striking début novel.
The human urge for survival which, in different ways, characterises all of these books is given particularly effective expression in Marcus Sedgwick's allegorical novel The Dark Horse (Orion, £7.99). Here, the story is of a tribe called The Storn, their quiet existence in an unspecified place at an uncertain time and the arrival in their lives of a child, subsequently known as Mouse, rescued from a cave of wolves. Its strongly mythic underpinning and its spare, understated style make this a powerful piece of storytelling.
Robert Dunbar lectures in English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathmines, Dublin