Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan

Lit­tle­town Se­crets

Au­thor: K Jared Ho­sein

Pub­lished by: Pot­bake Pro­duc­tions, 2013

A re­view by Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan

Writ­ing com­pelling fic­tion for chil­dren and young adults is no play­ground en­deav­our, if the lack of en­gag­ing YA fic­tion in the re­gion is any in­di­ca­tion. Chil­dren who read fre­quent­ly ex­press dis­may at not be­ing able to find them­selves, rep­re­sent­ed as they tru­ly are, in books. In K Jared Ho­sein's de­but novel­la, Lit­tle­town Se­crets, young read­ers will thrill to the sug­ges­tion that they can read en­gag­ing sto­ries about them­selves–ones that are root­ed in fan­ta­sy but re­tain a sober, re­al­is­tic heart.Pub­lished in 2013 by Pot­bake Pro­duc­tions, Lit­tle­town Se­crets acts as both a col­lec­tion of sev­en in­ter­linked short sto­ries as well as a novel­la. Each sto­ry takes the shape of a para­ble, fo­cus­ing on the tri­als of one of the young peo­ple of Lit­tle­town. It's a place where every­one, adult and ju­ve­nile alike, has some­thing to hide. Since the na­ture of con­ceal­ment so fre­quent­ly gives rise to un­planned con­fes­sions, one en­tre­pre­neur­ial boy es­tab­lish­es a busi­ness that Lit­tle­town des­per­ate­ly needs. He sets up a mod­est home­made stand and charges 25 cents to any­one who wants a se­cret kept.

This in­tre­pid, un­named nar­ra­tor promis­es not to tell any­one what he hears, but he can't help but pri­vate­ly record his find­ings. The town's chil­dren flock to him, re­veal­ing their en­coun­ters with fan­tas­ti­cal crea­tures. Each one of the crea­tures has mys­ti­cal ori­gins–and not a sin­gle one of them, it seems, comes bear­ing good in­ten­tions. How do the sev­en pro­tag­o­nists nav­i­gate the temp­ta­tions of this mot­ley as­sort­ment of sin­is­ter be­ings?One of the si­mul­ta­ne­ous plea­sures and per­ils of any short sto­ry col­lec­tion re­sides in un­even­ness: some sto­ries will, on their own mer­its, de­clare them­selves su­pe­ri­or to oth­ers, even when they're all writ­ten by the same au­thor. In the case of Lit­tle­town Se­crets, the sto­ry you'll like best might hinge prin­ci­pal­ly on which car­di­nal sin most pre­oc­cu­pies you. You needn't be Catholic to cop to the guilty plea­sures of sev­er­al slices of choco­late cake, or the heady rush of an all-con­sum­ing rage. In Ho­sein's moral­ly-fu­elled sto­ry land­scapes, the de­ci­sions to err are nev­er de­monised–the writer saves the ap­pli­ca­tion of forked tongues and red horns for the demons them­selves.

What may strike an adult read­er as sig­nif­i­cant are the ways in which these demons are hu­man­ised, ren­der­ing them of­ten too close for com­fort in a se­ries of ef­fec­tive par­al­lels. In al­most every in­stance, the sprites, satyrs and nox­ious spir­its don't in­tro­duce the con­cept of sin to these lit­tle chil­dren; they mere­ly build on its sug­ges­tion.In The Se­cret of the Clock Tow­er's Past, a sto­ry that fo­cus­es on en­vy, the an­tag­o­nists are ex­pired hu­mans: a pair of spec­tres in con­stant com­pe­ti­tion with each oth­er. The end re­sults of en­vy aren't pret­ty, as they both cau­tion Lu­cas Grape, the young boy who in­ter­rupts their un­easy con­fine­ment: "The en­vi­ous are so of­ten con­sumed by their own pas­sion...we died with it and now, we are noth­ing more than phan­toms for­ev­er doomed to play tricks on each oth­er in­side this wretched clock tow­er."There is much to rec­om­mend Lit­tle­town Se­crets as a wor­thy ad­di­tion to the long va­ca­tion read­ing list of young book­worms. The book is il­lus­trat­ed con­vinc­ing­ly by Ho­sein him­self, in a se­ries of black and white sketch­es that add depth to, rather than de­tract from, the ac­tion of each sto­ry. Ho­sein's lan­guage is clear and crisp, mak­ing good use of di­a­logue, even though the nar­ra­tive oc­ca­sion­al­ly dips its toe in­to ver­bose wa­ters.

Ho­sein is at his best in the novel­la when he steers clear of an aca­d­e­m­ic treat­ment sur­round­ing lan­guage. Many of the best pas­sages are art­ful­ly worked in­to the sto­ry­telling in the form of the nar­ra­tor's rem­i­nis­cences, in which he di­rect­ly ad­dress­es the gap be­tween adult and child­hood ex­pe­ri­ence.In The Se­cret of the Lone­ly Lantern's Glow, the nar­ra­tor mus­es, "Child­hood love can be so naive, so sil­ly and so un­so­phis­ti­cat­ed, but any­one who has been in love at such an ear­ly age knows that it is no less won­der­ful than a gen­er­a­tion ahead, and the hurt that can come with it is no less cru­el."What may most en­dear young read­ers to Lit­tle­town Se­crets is this qual­i­ty: the de­sire to por­tray in­ter­est­ing, in­tel­li­gent, con­flict­ed youth with all the sen­si­tiv­i­ty and grace that such sto­ries de­serve.