Let the Light In

Written by a mother and son team, this powerful novel starts with seventeen-year-old Leah happily living on cloud nine as she goes for yet another steamy session with her married art-gallery owning lover, some twelve years older. Not exactly how books for teenagers used to be written but well within the Young Adult terrain where the frankest descriptions of sex, drug use, psychiatric illness and general social alienation no longer come as any surprise. Thankfully Leah is also on the pill, so avoiding the unplanned pregnancy almost inevitably following out of wedlock trysts in earlier fiction.

But trouble is still looming, as Leah’s discontented younger brother Charlie, aged fifteen, falls in with a ruthless and menacing loan shark. The children’s father, meanwhile, has already suffered an early death and as a result their clinically depressed mother hides away indoors rarely getting out of bed. No help there, then, as Leah starts suffering guilt about threatening her lover’s marriage and its small baby while Charlie discovers that spending money he owes in order to buy friends is never going to work. Their combined story is well told in effectively punchy prose, with Leah and Charlie separate narrators of their own turbulent stories.

Nothing not to like and sometimes admire here, but so much angst does risk over-load, and by the end descriptions of yet another confused late-adolescent psychological state becomes one too many. It takes Charlie until page 329 before admitting to feeling momentarily happy while Leah’s gathering emotional turmoil cannot avoid becoming repetitive page after page. But for readers who stick with this story, as many surely will, there is a somewhat contrived happy ending to look forward to, where realism for once gives way to wish-fulfillment all round.