Thorn

A.F. Harrold’s first prose novel in four years arrives with all the strangeness and tenderness that readers of The Imaginary or The Song from Somewhere Else will immediately recognise. Thorn is a singular piece of work: surreal, quietly beautiful and unlike almost anything else being published for young adults at the moment.

The premise is arresting from the first page. Thorn wakes up outside her own body. She can observe her life and the lives of those around her, present but not present, watching rather than inhabiting. What follows is part mystery, part metaphysics, part coming of age story told from an angle that makes the familiar feel entirely new. Through her observations, and through a series of carefully handled time slips between her present, her past and her future, Thorn is faced with the question at the centre of everything: who is she, and what made her?

Harrold brings a poet’s instinct to his prose, and it shows on every page. The writing has a rhythm and precision that is never showy but consistently beautiful, and his feel for the surreal is matched by a deep empathy for his characters. A guiding cat appears, naturally, because this is A.F. Harrold, and somehow the presence of that cat feels both completely unexpected and entirely inevitable.

The novel speaks directly to the questions many teenagers are navigating right now: disconnection, the search for identity, the difficulty of knowing yourself when the world keeps shifting around you. But Harrold resists the didactic. These themes emerge through the texture of the story rather than being stated, and the result is something that feels genuinely illuminating rather than instructive.

Milly Chapple’s illustrations are a vital part of what makes this book work. Image and text are in constant conversation, with Chapple’s pictures extending and deepening the atmosphere that Harrold’s words create rather than simply accompanying them. Together they produce something that feels closer to an illustrated poem than a conventional novel, which is precisely what makes it so memorable.

Surreal and sweet, mysterious and deeply empathetic, Thorn is a remarkable and quietly daring piece of storytelling. It deserves to find its way into the hands of every young reader who has ever felt slightly outside of their own life.