By Any Other Name

Holly Latham is over 15 years old. Until a few days before the book starts, she was Louisa Drummond. Because of something she saw – we are not told what – she has had to move to a new home and a new identity. However, the disguise is imperfect. Holly has a sister Katie, who can’t be asked to support a new name and identity because she has autism.

The new life is far from easy. Because of her special needs, Katie has brought her school records with her, her old school details redacted. Holly however can have no records and must pretend to have been taught at home. In her old life Louisa was a pupil at an independent school for girls. She had musical talent, was a regular social media user and was popular. But the rules of new identity dictate that Holly can have no link with the past. In her new existence she attends a fairly depressing comprehensive school and must live in a village buried in the countryside. The only advantage of the new location is that there is a special school for Katie nearby, which comforts Holly not in the least.

The first part of Jarratt’s book recounts the turmoil as the Latham family struggle to adapt to being different people.  At school Holly has been told by her Witness Protection Officer that she must maintain a low profile, aspiring to be more or less invisible. For a while she complies but then two boys puncture her pose. The school glamour boy is Fraser. Holly becomes his girlfriend, though she finds herself oddly unconnected to him. The other boy is Joe, whom she calls Emo-boy. With his pierced eyebrow and ear, Joe is a compulsive loner. Which boy will remain close to her? Where will the friendship lead? Meanwhile Holly has endless nightmares about the experience that caused her to be exiled from her old life, but the reader learns only little by little what that experience was.

In this book Jarratt pulls off three unusual achievements. First, in a text that is readily accessible to young readers, she poses genuinely existential questions: who am I? What is most precious about my identity? How would it feel to lose it all? Second she convincingly explains the working of a witness protection programme. And third, she comes to grips with the issue of disability. In the new Latham family the only one who is allowed to remain the same is the one who started off being different, autistic Katie. Referencing children’s literature, Jarratt shows that she understands the images of disability conveyed in some of the most enduring novels about the disabled – images constructed from values we today find repellent. All in all this is a remarkable novel, one I can hardly recommend too warmly.