Troublemakers
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- £2.49
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- £2.49
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2018
Nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2018
Longlisted for the Branford Boase Award 2018
In three years I will be able to vote and I will still have less power than I did at the moment that I saw that email, which was such a tiny thing but look what happened.
Fifteen-year-old Alena never really knew her political activist mother, who died when she was a baby. She has grown up with her older half-brother Danny and his boyfriend Nick in the east end of London. Now the area is threatened by a bomber who has been leaving explosive devices in supermarkets. It is only a matter of time before a bomb goes off.
Against this increasingly fearful backdrop, Alena seeks to discover more about her past, while Danny takes a job working for a controversial politician. As her family life implodes, and the threat to Londoners mounts, Alena starts getting into trouble. Then she does something truly rebellious.
A searing, heartbreaking coming-of-age tale for fans of Lisa Williamson, Jenny Downham and Sarah Crossan.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Barter debuts with an engrossing family story set in London. Danny became the legal guardian of his younger sister, Alena, when she was three and he was 22, after their mother died. Alena is 15 as the novel opens, and she yearns to learn more about her activist mother, but even the smallest question sends Danny into a rage. Only Nick, Danny's longtime partner and Alena's second dad, will engage with her on the subject. Though Alena has plenty of strong friendships, and everyone is talking about a bomber terrorizing London's East End, the focus of this novel is on her family, her growing conflict with Danny about their mother, and the job he's taken managing the campaign of a conservative candidate, to Nick's chagrin. Barter confidently laces conflict and tension into the relationships among Nick, Danny, and Alena, drawing out the hardships they've faced during a decade of grief, doing their best to be a stable family. The bomber subplot feels peripheral, a device intended to add urgency, but Barter's novel should appeal to a wide audience for its emotional honesty and its complex characters and relationships. Ages 13 up.
