After Iris

Bluebell Gadsby (13), Blue for short, tells the story. Then there’s drama queen Flora, (16) and ‘The Babes’, Jasmine (8) and Jonathan (10), who prefers to be called Twig to fit in with the botanical theme. Dad’s an Oxford-educated medievalist Prof at Warwick who met Mum in the Glastonbury mud; she’s now a globe-trotting executive with Butilycious Cosmetics. Both have a selfishness rating which no adolescent could hope to match. The sanest person around is the au pair, Zoran, Bosnian born but raised in England, brilliant PhD student, versatile pianist, lay child psychologist and rotten cook. That’s the Gadsby ménage. Except the elephant in everyone’s room and the explanation (we must believe) for everyone’s oddities – especially Mum and Dad’s self-absorption and absence from the family – is Iris, Blue’s twin sister who died in a road accident three years ago. No-one speaks about her though no-one, especially Blue, ever forgets her. The cast is completed by tough-talking Granny, Joss the glamorous boy who moves in next door to the Gadsbys’ London home, sundry school friends and strange teachers at the Free School the kids attend. This is Free as in Wacky, rather than a whim of Mr Gove’s back-of-an-envelope education strategy.

Real this ain’t. Any young reader putting her trust in this fictional blueprint for living is in for some shocks. The book may well provide an escapist read to enjoy the Gadsbys’ middle-class, city-slick dialogue, their teenage romances and tantrums; they’re sensitive and funny and crass by turns, rather like the kids in Outnumbered.

The Christmassy family love-in which concludes the book asks us to believe that they’ve all suddenly Faced the Iris Question and Come Through. I reckoned about two weeks before war broke out again. Far better to forget the grand therapeutic claims and take After Iris for what it is – a quickfire, witty YA family sitcom story with a strand of underlying seriousness. No more and no less. In those terms, it’s well-written, with Blue’s diary narrative alternating with film transcripts since she relentlessly videos family life, the suggestion being (I think) that the camera both distances her from pain and allows her a hiding place. The Gadsbys might well become very popular; as the Faber blurb suggests, this is a welcome ‘alternative to vampires, dystopias and “issues”’.