The Protected (Claire Zorn, UQP)

Strong characters and a standout depiction of high school bullying make Claire Zorn’s second YA novel, following The Sky So Heavy, worth reading. In the present tense, 14-year-old Hannah awaits a court date, at which she will have to relive the death of her older sister almost a year ago. In the past tense, Hannah recalls the years of harassment she endured at school before her sister died and her tormentors suddenly left her alone. As the two narratives build—the first towards the hearing, the second towards the accident itself—we begin to wonder whether Hannah is telling the truth about not remembering the accident, or whether she might be an unreliable narrator. The novel’s two narratives run parallel and are seamlessly interpolated. While The Protected employs familiar tropes—the car crash, the bullying, the counselling, the hot nice-guy, the cliff-dive-as-character-turning-point—it’s good enough to win you over. This novel is highly readable, emotionally generous, impeccably controlled, and studded with memorable scenes, particularly those that allow us to glimpse a family’s pain at the loss of their child.

Samuel Williams is a creative writing graduate and a part-time bookseller at Mostly Books in South Australia