Peadar O’Guilin: I Wish I’d Written
Peadar O’Guilin chooses a novel that does everything.
A book is only as good as the feelings it kindles: the warmth, the chills; that gawping fascination that demands to be fed. There are plenty of award winners that don’t hit the right levels of emotional intensity and these disappear down history’s plughole before the last bottle of champagne has been recycled. Meanwhile, ‘weaker’ books can last through generations on the basis of one perfect kiss, or a fight scene that has us postponing bedtime until well after madness o’clock.
And then, a few times in a busy life, a novel appears that does everything. I mean all of it.
Maggie Stiefvater‘s YA story, The Scorpio Races, is one of those. It’s a love story. It’s terrifying. And big, bold emotions are shaded on all sides by subtler tones too: like companionship, warmth, unease and nostalgia.
It’s a tale that stimulates the mind as well as the heart, with a compelling setting that is steeped in legend and fear, and it does all of this without ever short-changing the plot.
The island of Thisby, where the action takes place, could be Scottish, Irish, or a patch of land off the Isle of Mann. I once asked the author, where exactly it was. She wouldn’t say, and it doesn’t matter. Read The Scorpio Races. Read it now.
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater is published by Scholastic, 978-0702322839, £8.99 pbk.
The Call by Peadar O’Guilin is published by David Fickling Books, 978-1788453943, £8.99 pbk.
