In a climate change-affected dystopian setting, recognisable as the author’s home of New Zealand although not explicitly named, Snow is a young teenage girl whose stepmother wants her dead. To this end, she tasks a hunter with taking Snow into the forest near their mountain chateau, killing her and bringing back her heart as proof. […]
Jessica Miller’s second novel, The Republic of Birds, is a meticulously written, profoundly feminist story of exile and power. It takes place against a landscape conjured out of Russian folklore and nineteenth and early twentieth century history, and draws its storybook magic from the tropes of middle grade fantasy even as it vigorously interrogates them. […]
What knowledge is worth having? Sixteen year old Adele asks herself this in crime writer Malla Nunn’s YA debut, after her room mate calls her ignorant. The insult smarts all the more because it comes from Lottie Diamond, who is what Adele calls a third-class girl. A bottom-shelf girl. A girl with whom someone like […]
CATHERINE NORTON