Teen Fiction: Unexpected teenage pregancy is at the core of a clutch of new books, writes Robert Dunbar
Josephine Kamm's Young Mother, first published in 1965, remains the signpost text for numerous young adult novels dealing with the related themes of teenage pregnancy and single parenthood. In the 40 years of their existence they have come in almost every imaginable tone, from the saccharine and sentimental to the strident and the sensationalist. And, almost always, they have continued to focus on events from the young mother's perspective.
Margaret Bechard's Hanging on to Max (Bite, £5.99) not only manages to avoid extremes of tone but also directs its main attention to a young father's response to the situation in which he and his partner find themselves. When 17-year-old Sam takes it upon himself to become the custodial parent for baby Max it is a decision which involves abandoning many of the usual teenage pursuits and aspirations and demands a reassessment of his relationship with his father. Bechard traces the evolution of these two father-son narratives in a prose which is all the more effective for being understated and totally non-judgemental.
Also from America, though dealing with a very different social background, Janet McDonald's Chill Wind (Collins, £5.99) is primarily concerned with 19-year-old Aisha, unmarried mother of two, and her determination (especially when her welfare benefits are threatened) to overcome impoverishment. In the exuberance with which she pursues her goal and in the candour with which she reacts to various possible sources of employment she never, even at her most apparently feckless, loses the reader's sympathy. There are some wonderfully colourful set pieces, including a hilarious sequence at a model agency, enhanced by the liberal use throughout of spiky New York street argot.
If, overall, Annie & Maria Dalton's Invisible Threads (Definitions, £5.99) is a quieter fiction than McDonald's, this is in no way to diminish its strong emotional impact. Structured so as to allow, in alternate chapters, for the stories of two 16-year-old girls, the novel skilfully binds their destinies together by delineating the consequences for both of them of the pregnancy experienced by one of them. The most impressive facet of the Daltons' technique is to convey the girls' shared yearning for love and acceptance and to place these within a framework of their families' histories, with special emphasis on the threads which link mothers and their daughters.
Family histories and the mixed blessings they can bequeath serve as a significant backcloth for Bali Rai's Rani and Sukh (Corgi, £5.99), a novel which tellingly traces a family feud from its origins in the Punjab of the 1960s to its 2004 manifestation in the city of Leicester. In both settings, it is a teenage pregnancy which arouses bitterness, anger and, ultimately, tragedy: there is a powerful impression of the young being driven by a fate, totally beyond their control, which will destroy or certainly diminish their snatched moments of happiness. This is a novel which challenges assumptions about race, gender roles and family loyalties.
When we first meet teenager Jade and the child called Finn in Valerie Mendes's Lost and Found (Simon & Schuster, £5.99) they are introduced as sister and brother. But the full truth about the relationship has yet to unfold and we watch it do so principally through the eyes of 17-year-old Daniel who, once he falls in love with Jade, is drawn into her family's secrets. Their love and Finn's wellbeing are endangered when the past - and Jade's in particular - begins to catch up. Occasionally predictable from then on, perhaps, the novel nevertheless continues to engage our interest, aided by its evocative Oxford setting.
We end, as we began, with two American young adult novels, both of them - very humorously - concerned with matters other than teenage pregnancy and single parenthood. K. L. Going's remarkable début, Fat Kid Rules the World (Corgi, £4.99) charts, in an idiom which is often raw but never dull, the progress of overweight Troy - "I have the Empire State Building of asses" - towards self-fulfilment. He is steered in this direction by punk guitarist Curt, who signs him up as drummer for his band, even if his musical talents until then have been non-existent. New York's meaner streets and their humanity, in all its weirdest representations, have rarely been more entertainingly re-created.
If Going's novel should have a special appeal for the young punk enthusiast, then Ned Vizzini's Be More Chill (Collins, £5.99) will speak most forcibly (and often scatologically) to the computer freak. Jeremy, a student at a US high school where sex seems to be the only subject on the curriculum, longs to be "cool" and have a girlfriend: happiness (of sorts) arrives when he is introduced to a quantum computer which is ingested in a pill, travels to the brain and interacts via a form of telepathic voice. It is all very clever, very rude - and very funny.
• Robert Dunbar is Head of English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathmines, Dublin