In the Shadow of the Gun ¦ Kirsten

Both of these novels take as their starting point the arrival in Scotland of a young teenager from Northern Ireland, forced to leave there because of experiences in the current 'troubles'. For Shaun, in In the Shadow of the Gun, it is to be a stay of six weeks with his cousins, during which time he learns something of the shared history of his new and former environments and of how that history 'seems one long battle': the overall effect of the visit is that he is sufficiently strengthened by it to return to Ulster able to 'cope', as the book's final sentence assures us. By contrast, for Kirsten in Cameron's second novel, the initial experiences she undergoes in her adopted country merely mark the beginning of what will be a permanent stay: for her too, though, this has been strengthening and will equip her to face her new future with more maturity and ease.

Summarised in these terms, both books are useful additions to the already large stock of material in which young protagonists face dramatic change and learn to live through it, with the extra interest here of an insidiously dark backcloth against which new lives have to be created. Cameron, however, is not a particularly subtle writer and the plotting is often heavy handed and pedestrian: we are told so much that there is very little left for us to infer. Regrettably, both books show signs of hasty editing, the first of them even managing to include a reference to 'a growing conciousness of the past' on its back cover.