TEENAGE FICTION: As the first novel in a planned series, City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende falls rather flat, but the scenes set in the Amazonian jungle could be a good first introduction to environmental issues, writes Yvonne Nolan.
City of the Beasts. By Isabel Allende, Flamingo, 406pp. £12.99
Alex Cold is a 15-year-old Californian whose suburban life of school and home is thrown into turmoil when his mother falls prey to an aggressive cancer. As the eldest sibling of three, Alex tries unsuccessfully to be adult and cope with his mother's inability to be the chief carer in the family. His misery is compounded when his mother has to go away for treatment and he and his sisters are divided between two grandmothers.
Alex draws the short straw and is given into the care of his paternal grandmother, Kate Cold, a no-nonsense travel writer who's about to go on assignment in the Amazon for the magazine International Geographic. Kate, a grumpy pioneer of self-reliance, doesn't even bother to meet Alex at the airport when he arrives in New York and she has plenty more tough love in store for him as they embark on the Amazon voyage together.
Around 40-odd pages into Isabel Allende's first novel aimed at the young adult/teen market, the engine of the book splutters to life. Alex makes friends with 12-year-old Nadia who has spent her life in the rainforest and together the friends meet an assortment of characters ranging from the big, bad speculative outsiders who aim to despoil the jungle, to the gentle, spiritual Indians whose lives and culture are in deadly peril.
The heart of grandmother Kate's International Geographic mission is to verify if such a creature as an Amazonian Yeti exists but the beasts of the title prove illusive. In the end it is Alex and Nadia who lift the veil and pass into the magical world of the Beasts and the tribe they protect, the People of the Mist.
As the first novel in a planned series, this is a rather flat effort with characters as thin as the paper they're written on and messages walloped home with a lump hammer. Nevertheless, City of the Beasts shines in its evocation of the Amazonian jungle and could be a good first introduction to global environmental issues.
Yvonne Nolan is a journalist and critic