Teenage Fiction:American schools have long been a popular setting for teenage fiction, serving as background for some of the most powerful - and some of the most trivial - examples of the genre. To those already in the former category must now be added John Green's quite remarkable Looking for Alaska, a novel that, in addition to being exquisitely written, is simultaneously witty, profound and original in its handling of theme, narrative and characterisation.
At its centre is a 15-year-old boy, Miles, whose principal hobby is the collecting of the dying words of the famous. As he embarks on his studies at Alabama's Culver Creek Preparatory, he has in mind Rabelais's "I go to seek a Great Perhaps"; shortly after his arrival at the school he is introduced by a fellow student, the Alaska of the title, to Simon Bolivar's "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?". Miles's ensuing relationship with Alaska, as the teenagers move between the aspiration and the quandary of these utterances, provides a storyline unforgettable in its delineation of adolescent desire, tragedy and ultimate survival.
The intensity of feeling that characterises Green's novel is to be found also in Tim Bowler's impressive Frozen Fire. Here, the setting is a snow-covered landscape in the contemporary north of England and the principal character a young teenage girl called Dusty. Receiving a phone call from someone who would seem to have some connection with her older brother, Josh, who has mysteriously disappeared two years previously, she becomes caught up in a harrowing sequence of events as she draws closer to the identity of the caller. The triumph of the novel is in the depiction of the tensions, the hopes and the false trails of her pursuit. Bowler's unravelling of his plot is subtle and ingenious, skilfully mingling the eerie and disturbing with the more everyday dilemmas of family life.
The "family life" of Jenny, the 14-year-old heroine of Sarah Wray's The Forbidden Room, takes a new turn when, left orphaned and disabled following a car accident, she is fostered by Helen and John Holland and their young son Stephen. Initially, everything seems to be going well, even if, almost from the outset, Jenny has reasons for sensing some elements of unease and secrecy in the household. These eventually become centred on her new home's "forbidden room" and the particular area of scientific research that goes on there. The portrayal of a young girl bewildered by her growing grasp of the Hollands' activities is sympathetic and convincing, although there are times when the storyline seems to give way to the "big ethical debate" that the Hollands promote.
There is more than enough material in Catherine MacPhail's Nemesis: Into the Shadows for "big ethical debate", but the emphasis here is primarily on action. And what action. A young male amnesiac, somewhere in a Scottish town in the grip of "petty criminals, thugs, drug barons, gangsters . . . ", witnesses events leading up to a murder and becomes involved in its complex and murky consequences. Among much else there's a local bogeyman, a fire, a near drowning, a threatened bloodbath at a disco and some quite nasty fights. But Ram, as he calls himself, has also to cope with the puzzles of his own past and with the man who might or might not be his father, resulting in a highly entertaining thriller that unashamedly exploits chance and coincidence.
From MacPhail's contemporary Scottish grittiness we turn, in Joan O'Neill's Dream Chaser, to rural Co Cork in the early 1920s. It is from here that 14-year-old Eleanor O'Rourke follows her dream of emigrating to America and becoming a success in the fashion world. Writing with ease and confidence, O'Neill chronicles her heroine's frustrations, disappointments and snatched moments of happiness against a background of authentic period detail, and is particularly good at showing how, even on the streets of Manhattan or Boston, Eleanor's memories of home and its values serve as a corrective to the indulgence of her ambitions. This is a novel in which realism and romance are judiciously balanced, one that demonstrates that, irrespective of time or place, Rabelais's "Great Perhaps" is the quintessential adolescent dream to be chased.
Looking for Alaska By John Green HarperCollins, 272pp.
£6.99
Frozen Fire By Tim Bowler Oxford, 352pp. £12.99
The Forbidden Room By Sarah Wray Faber & Faber, 257pp.
£6.99
Nemesis: Into the Shadows By Catherine MacPhail Bloomsbury,
292pp. £5.99
Dream Chaser By Joan O'Neill Hodder, 266pp.
£5.99
Robert Dunbar is a commentator on children's books and reading