Stories by Helen Dunmore, Clare Wigfall, Rose Tremain, Helen Simpson etc, chosen for their "accessibility and for their relevance to the way we live now". It's designed for schoolchildren I think, with notes, suggested activities and reader guides. There are illustrations, and footnotes to explain words like "coaxed". Only a few of the stories were written specifically for teenagers. There are 5 sections (culture clash, growing up, death, school/home, adult), the difficult stories towards the end of each section according to the introduction.
I liked Helen Dunmore's "Lilac" though the twist wasn't a surprise. I like Colm Toibin's "A Summer Job" which ends "Frances did not know whether her going was the lifting of a burden for John or a loss which he could not contemplate. The more she looked at him, the more she realised that at this moment she did not herself know the difference. Suddenly John glanced at the window and saw her watching him. He shrugged as if to say that he would give nothing away, she could look at him as long as she liked". And I liked "The Chain", described as "a sad story without a neat conclusion". "Waving at trains" by Mathew Davey is my favourite. "Peerless" (Rose Tremain) is nearly as good.
In Echo Freer's "The Scream" I presumed the 1st person narrator was a ghost as soon as she died - before the narrator did. I can't work out why "The Boy who fell asleep" by Mick Jackson was chosen. I've read "Tuesday Lunch" by Leila Aboulela before. The main character, Nadia is eight. She has school dinners in the gym. She is getting used to western ways. It dawns on her that it wouldn't be right to behave at lunchtime as if it were a gym session. She's learning fast.
In "The Beast" (Philip O Ceallaigh) an old man walks along a road - "He passed a boy and girl. They had been kissing and he had disturbed them. They separated and greeted him politely and did not resume speaking until he had passed. They were both perhaps sixteen. He knew the families they came from, knew more about their grandparents and great-grandparents than they knew themselves. But the knowledge of their grandparents meant nothing to them. The old were fading and disappearing and the world needed to be discovered again, for the first time. Only kisses on warm summer evenings, the first ones in the history of the world, were real to the young. And the young were right, he felt". I guessed the 50-50 offer but not the final twist. I liked "Blinds" by Jackie Kay.
I tend not to like didactic pieces. These aren't too preachy though. I was hoping for more narrational variety, as in The Room, or The Wasp Factory. They use standard English. No gangs or rude words. The footnotes are quirky. On p.201 "dill" is given an extensive footnote - "a plant of the parsley family, the leaves of which are used as a herb". "Derrida" on p.212 isn't given a footnote. On p.217 "gritted teeth" is footnoted but not "Parasitical symbiosis".
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