Edwina Shaw

http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/edwina-shaws-thrill-seekers/

This is part of a 'gritty' Young Adult series from Ransom Publishing UK. A gang of Brisbane children progress from mucking around in Oxley Creek to more risky adolescent thrills. In what might seem a standard children's or YA literature trope, the father of the main characters dies in the first chapter, and their mother is pretty much lost in grief and alcohol. In what follows the young people go more and more out of control. There's an awful lot of flagon wine ('goon') and marijuana, a range of other drugs, quite a bit of violence, some awful sex and a lot of wretchedness. The most vulnerable character goes horrifyingly, dangerously mad. At the end there is a glimmer of hope.

The book treats its difficult subject matter without romanticising it, and without moralising. The story of the young man who descends into paranoia takes us heartbreakingly into 'the unique terror that the word madness conveys' (a phrase from philosopher Raimond Gaita).… (meer)