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Like war,
writing fiction
for young people
can often be a
"brain-spattering,
windpipe-slitting
art". Anybody
raised on the
Brothers Grimm
can probably get
through American
Psycho without
turning a hair.
But Darren Shan
set new
standards for
goriness in his
novel Lord Loss
(2005), with a
scene in which
Grubbs Grady,
the teenage
narrator, came
home one day to
find his parents
and sister being
brutally
murdered by what
turned out to be
demons from
another
universe.
Poor old
Grubbs's
problems had
hardly started.
Lord Loss was
the inaugural
volume of The
Demonata, a
sequence that
looks as though
it will run for
as long as
Shan's
bestselling,
12-volume "Saga
of Darren Shan".
The latest book
in the series,
the third, is
called Slawter
(HarperCollins,
�12.99), a title
that suggests it
is best read
doing whatever
is the literary
equivalent of
watching the TV
from behind the
sofa.
Well, it's true
that a lot of
people get
brutally
murdered in
Slawter. The
plot sees Grubbs
involved in the
making of a
horror film in
which the
rampaging demons
turn out not to
have been made
by the
special-effects
department.
There follows
butchery on a
grand scale,
orchestrated by
the Demon-master
Lord Loss, who
is about as evil
as you would
expect for a man
who has a
snake-filled
hole where his
heart should be.
But Shan is not
just a mindless
purveyor of
grisly thrills.
Like all good
fantasists, he
is interested in
showing the
reactions of
ordinary people
to extraordinary
events. In this
story, Grubbs
discovers that
he is developing
magical powers,
but, after his
experiences,
finds the idea
of any sort of
involvement with
magic abhorrent.
Shan's portrayal
of his troubled
hero is
convincing and
affecting.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/07/16/bokids307.xml |
