Young adult verse novels are currently in the ascendant, with three American poets appearing on the Carnegie shortlist: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, and Rebound by Kwame Alexander. On this side of the Atlantic, the driving force behind the verse novel’s resurgence is the Irish children’s laureate Sarah Crossan, whose 2011 book The Weight of Water won acclaim both from adult reviewers and from a wide-ranging young readership.
Crossan went on to produce more highly successful verse novels: One, a story of conjoined twins, won the Carnegie in 2016, and Moonrise, an account of a boy’s farewell to a brother on death row, was shortlisted for the 2017 Costa children’s prize. Toffee, her latest story told in verse, returns to several poignant and recurrent themes: belonging, identity, grief and trauma, and shaping one’s place in the world.
Allison has run away from her abusive father, hoping to find his ex-fiancee, Kelly-Anne, who cared for her in a way he never could. Stranded in a Cornish seaside town, she takes refuge in the garden of an apparently abandoned house – and discovers that Marla, an elderly woman with dementia, still lives there. When Marla greets Allison as Toffee, a friend from her past, Allison willingly accepts the role. As she grows closer to Marla, however, she becomes less inclined to keep the deception alive, beginning to search, instead, for the shape of her true self.
Like Crossan’s previous verse novels, Toffee is divided into short pieces, a page or two in length; each of these is as satisfying as a smoothed piece of seaglass, strung together to create a spectrum of pain and consolation. The sparse words reveal the artistry in every phrase. The book is saturated by the sense of secrecy (“We nudged the truth out of the way with our elbows / And waded through heavy silence”). Ribald flashes of lucidity from Marla, commenting on a boy’s “peachy backside” or the Queen’s need for a “decent bra”, are, by contrast, giddily hilarious.
Though Toffee is a pain-filled story, it is also hopeful and profoundly moving; laced with old hurts and small kindnesses, it’s a book that changes its reader for the better.
• Toffee is published by Bloomsbury (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
