Trouble: A memoir

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Aaron was great. My favorite part tbh. He could be a bit of a martyr at times, but I found the portrayal of his coping mechanisms very realistic. I especially appreciated the apathy aspect of his depression being shown, as I can relate big time. For me this book is all about friendship and the main characters learning what it is to be a good friend. As the book goes on you get to see shifts in the social groups both Hannah and Aaron associate with and it is brilliant to see them at that last stage of high school going into adulthood as they suss out which of their friends are true friends and deserve the loyalty the other can offer. We spent far too long messing about getting ready, so that by the time we came downstairs loads of Jay’s mates had arrived. I’m not going to lie. I was on the prowl. A summer of flirting with Tyrone and learning how to make a guy lose control had given me confidence.

I have been waiting to read trouble for a long time and I am delighted to say it didn't disappoint. Trouble is the story of Hannah and Aaron. Hannah is 15 and pregnant and Aaron is the new boy at school who pretends to be the father of her child. It was the perfect read for me for several reasons. Her best friend is slipping away from her, when she finds out, she's just pissed off becaause Hannah didn't tell her sooner and goes to Marcy, former teen model and school's queen B, who makes sure everybody know it via Facebook.I loved both Aaron and Hannah. I didn’t always agree with their actions but could always sympathise with them. Together, they were perfect. Even though it appeared to be just a friendship relationship – although I was rooting for more – but I could see why romance wasn’t added. These two didn’t need it in their lives because at that point of their lives, friendship was enough. It’s a tale of true best friends. One of my fascinations with Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 80s is how it became a place where different rules applied, where reality itself seemed up for grabs. Nowhere was this more the case than the “Provisional Republic” of South Armagh, AKA Bandit Country, with its handmade “sniper at work” signs and its community militias all surveyed by the watchtowers and helicopters of the British army. Toby Harnden’s book is a compulsively fascinating tour of this alternative universe. Trouble is an extremely fun, wonderfully British and compassionate novel with a serious side. I started to read Trouble shortly before attending the Walker Blogger Night, just to see what it was like, and before I knew it, I was dropping my current book and taking it to work with me. If you enjoy young adult contemporary, you will want to have Trouble on your shelves. Everyone will be talking about this year and you won't want to miss out.

Aaron’s perspective throughout the book is what differentiated Trouble for me from an experience like Juno. True, Aaron is not actually the babydaddy—and while his volunteering of those services might seem far-fetched, the juxtaposition of his rising star with Katie’s falling one says a lot about how something like being pregnant shows you who your friends are. The subplot about Aaron’s “shadowy past” teeters on the brink of cliché but never quite goes over—and at the very least, it serves to avoid making him into a manic pixie dream boy whose only purpose is to be Hannah’s friend. Gary Schmidt is probably my favorite children's writer after the venerable Katherine Paterson. I love both of them as phenomenal people, and admire them both madly as writers. So that's a disclaimer of sorts. That said--I didn't love TROUBLE as much as LIZZIE BRIGHT, and I didn't work on this book, so don't have quite the affection for it that I do for THE WEDNESDAY WARS. And I do see a few wee little problems in the narrative. BUT, they hardly matter b/c I think the heart of this book rises far above the narrative itself.

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There was a lot of girl hate in here. Under the circumstances it makes sense. I mean, what pregnant teen doesn't get any grief from her peers? Having none would be unrealistic. This particular trope is one I'm tired of but it was not completely out of place.

Hannah is fifteen and pregnant. Suddenly faced with motherhood alone she doesn't know what to do or who to turn to. When new guy in school offers to pretend to be the father to protect her from the students, who have turned into vultures, at school, Hannah accepts. They are thrown into a beautiful friendship but both Hannah and Aaron are keeping big secrets. What will happen when they all come to light? Will it tear the best friends apart or can their friendship stand all weathers? My own interest in the Troubles stems from my family on my father’s side. My father grew up in the Ardoyne, the primarily Catholic area of north Belfast that was the epicentre of the strife. His father had been a member of the IRA, and although my dad left Belfast just as the Troubles were beginning, most of his family stayed, and throughout my youth the war in Ireland, as my father called it, dominated family discussions, especially when one of his brothers came from Belfast to stay with us.

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Ultimately for me the best part of the book was the relationship between Hannah and Aaron and seeing how it develops over the course of the book. I loved how they bonded but still fell out and argued like proper teenagers. I loved seeing Hannah through Aaron's eyes and I loved seeing how they supported one another through some really though situations. And I began to think of Belfast, and how often it had been rebuilt, as a wild place, an autonomous zone – like cold war-era Berlin, or 1980s Airdrie, where I set my first book, This Is Memorial Device – and I wrote about it as if events there play out in their own time, which, for me, is the time in which all of the best Irish literature is fixed: eternity.