Teenage novels: Adolescence? Who'd want it? But the good teenage novel connects, consoles, affirms, inspires and reminds teenagers that they are all in this together. Young minds have no interest in knowing that last year's Frankfurt Book Fair featured 3,288 exhibitors from 113 countries showcasing 382,466 titles, and they won't buy hype. They just want good books. And here are some recent ones.
Hard Luck By Mary Arrigan Barrington Stoke, £4.99 Worse Than Boys By Catherine MacPhail Bloomsbury, £5.99 Eye of the Moon By Dianne Hofmeyr Simon and Schuster, £8.99 A Note of Madness By Tabitha Suzuma Definitions, £5.99 The Summoning By EE Richardson The Bodley Head, £8.99 The Swan Kingdom By Zöe Marriott Walker Books, £5.99 Henry Tumour By Anthony McGowan, Definitions, £5.99
• Mary Arrigan's Hard Luckis perfect for the reluctant or weak young reader. Matthew is a gentle 14-year-old, but home life is chaotic and he ends up on the streets. The writing contains the kind of detail that allows the reader to see and understand and question. When Matthew is mugged and later befriended by a posh-sounding old man, Jeremy, he joins other vagrants - "a mixed bunch who go our own ways" - and learns that, despite not having home, family, routine, purpose, "you must never listen to the voice of defeat". The upbeat message and simple story is copper-fastened when Miss Waters, Matthew's kind teacher, comes to the rescue. Ah, good old teachers! Magic-wand, improbable stuff.
• In Catherine MacPhail's Worse Than Boys, two gangs, Hell Cats and the Lip Gloss girls, share nothing but the same school and the fact that "we all had family problems". This is hoyden territory. Hannah Driscoll is like every teenager - her friends are more important than anything - and MacPhail's story goes beyond gang rivalry. The egging on, grassing and secrets lead to self-mutilation and suicidal thoughts. School and tenement block are vividly described, and both Hannah's sensitive narrative and the girls' dialogue ring true. The novel's focus is Hannah's being ostracised by her best friend; her single, insecure mum is no help: "I think she watches too many soap operas - everything she does seems like an act to me". Being a "loser" is a feared state but MacPhail manages a redemptive ending that doesn't cloy. MacPhail is one of the better writers around. For early teens, she handles serious concerns well but her story is never issue-driven or po-faced.
• Ancient Egypt is the setting for Dianne Hofmeyr's Eye of the Moon, which promises "poison, slavery and murder". Isikara tells an exotic story where crocodiles, mutilations, slaughtered goats, corruption, embalming and disguise are part of the everyday. This is a brother-and-sister story, a river journey, a chase where the impulsive, spirited Isikara ends up protecting the Royal Crown Prince. Danger is inevitable, love interest is unavoidable and justice is done. Expertly researched and brought to life, this is an imaginative, atmospheric and entertaining history lesson.
• Flynn, Finnish and brilliant, 18, has grown up in London, and his life is music. A Note of Madness, by Tabitha Suzuma, looks at Flynn's tightrope walk between what we call sanity and madness. Deadlines, rivalries and jealousies in the hot-housed, competitive world of the Royal College of Music are all there, but Suzuma handles the onset of manic depression with real skill. It's a headlong, darkening process: Flynn's alarm clock is "a cruel joke"; he goes "all monosyllabic again", goes "underground for days" and obsessive compulsions take hold. Flynn's mind is on fire, his body needs no rest, and then the "crushing torpor". Crisis comes. This and the necessary treatment are credibly paced and handled; we are drawn in. Suzuma also handles the music dimension with expertise: the "Rach Three" concert becomes the bridge that he has to cross and Flynn does come through in this very well written page-turner.
• EE Richardson knows how we enjoy being frightened and The Summoningsets out to scare. Justin and Joy Blake's grandfather studies the occult and, when the youngsters steal a magic spell, of course trouble follows. Major Spirits are summoned and Richardson [she's a 24-year-old cybernetics graduate] brings a necessary scepticism to her plot: her characters ask if it's mumbo jumbo or deadly dangerous.
Evil spirit Dracherion turns a rational world upside down and marks them for dead. The youngsters have two days to save themselves and their brush with dark magic ends with family revelations and exorcism.
• Zöe Marriott's The Swan Kingdomoffers another kind of magic. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Wild Swansand our Children of Lir, this is a lyrical, psychological account of how Alexandra - "a talented, unwanted child, the ugly one" - struggles with her mother's death and the other woman in her father's life. Alexandra's memory of her mother telling her of the enaid or the world's life force, "pulsing in my blood", sustains her though a story that includes disappointments, talented siblings, a fateful 15th birthday, a threatening Circle of Ancestors and the stuff of fairy tale, which means in this instance danger and darkness and what we all want - a kiss and a happy ending.
• Henry Tumourdeservedly won Anthony McGowan the Booktrust Teenage Prize. Stamped "Unsuitable for Younger Readers", it might sound like one of those in-your-face, crude-talking, clever ones, but it adds up to something much better, much more. The hero, Hector Brunty, an intellectual, tells it straight. He has hassle: "My mum was a hippy. My dad was nowhere. My school was a shit heap; I was bullied by Neanderthals and ignored by the girls." Heck also has a brain tumour, calls it Henry, and if you cop that this is a Henry to Shakespeare's Falstaff then you know how McGowan likes to play. Aduki beans, Philip Larkin, the Periodic Table, the girl he falls for [whose parents are a pain: "They both work at the university. So we haven't got a telly"] and a cartoon-strip ending are all part of this very entertaining, likeable, sad and sharp-eyed yarn.
The MSN, Bebo, YouTube, blog-happy screenagers will discover that a book like this offers something more intimate and interactive. You read alone, but you're always in company.
Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin. A Leaving Cert poetry anthology, Poetry Now 2009, which he edited, will be published later this month by the Celtic PressTeenage Fiction.