The Opposite of Amber by Gillian Philip

They found the fifth girl right after the snow melted ...the place where he left her was winter water, crazed with ice-feathers and dusted with snow. The traces from her body were gone, the ones that said his name, but she had an extra skin of ice that protected her and she looked perfect, like Snow White'.


Ruby and her older sister Jinn live together on their own, just about making ends meet. Jinn is beautiful, with glittering blonde hair, and makes it her business to look after Ruby. They are horrified by, but try to ignore, the local newspaper stories of prostitutes who are murdered, their bodies eventually discovered underwater. Then the no-good Nathan Baird turns up on the scene - again - and Jinn starts to change. First Nathan moves in with Jinn and Ruby, making Ruby feel an outsider, and then Jinn and Nathan move out, leaving Ruby alone. Jinn no longer has time to look after Ruby. And it seems to Ruby that Jinn herself needs looking after. Her beautiful glittering hair starts to lose its shine. And then Jinn disappears. A deeply moving, chilling, and incredibly powerful thriller that celebrates the love two sisters have for each other and mourns the events beyond their control that will conspire to drive them apart.

I am the world's most rubbish fan.  I love Gillian Philip's writing yet it has taken me ages to get around to reviewing The Opposite of Amber, which is truly crappy of me, considering how much I enjoyed it.

Gillian Philips has managed to create a very vivid experience for the reader, especially as the story is told from our main character, Ruby's point of view.  And Ruby is a very sensitive young girl who seems to experience things in high emotion.

When we meet Ruby she is pretty stressed out, thinking she had somehow made a school friend try and commit suicide.  Basically, Ruby was chatting to another boy at school, Foley, and Alex came up to talk to her, so she flippantly told him to jump off a cliff.  And Alex went and walked off the school's roof, injuring himself quite badly.  So she's in a pretty dark and emotional place.  All of this combines to make her feel pretty isolated and unwanted, added to the fact that her mum was never much of a mum in the first instance, so things are not at all pleasant for Ruby.

She adores her older sister, Jinn who, still very young herself, does her best to look after Ruby but is far too caught up in her own world, to really fuss with Ruby too much.

When the local bad boy turns up, and takes up his on again off again relationship with Jinn, Ruby's life takes an even worse turn.  She watches her sister Jinn go out of her way to do everything for him, making excuses and fussing around him, ignoring Ruby's feelings and inviting him to become their "lodger".  Unfortunately Jinn's love for Nathan is so all consuming that she loses her job and has to resort to walking the streets to try and care of them.  It is grim and unpleasant and stark and real.  Where Jinn was this gorgeous girl with a future ahead of her, it is Ruby, the quiet voiceless one, the shadow, who is forced to become tougher, stronger, grow a voice and to sort things out.

The relationship between the sisters is very important in the novel.  They are a unit, a family, and with Nathan added to the mix, along with his debt and the dangers that comes with that, it quickly turns into a mess.

Added to this, a range of serial murders has taken place.  A murderer has been killing prostitutes, or girls he assume are prostitutes and of course, with Jinn walking the streets, poor Ruby is scared senseless.

The novel is written in a very colloquial Scottish way, which for about five minutes made it difficult to get in to, but once you hit your stride it works to enhance the atmosphere and sense of place.  As usual Gillian stretches herself as an author and we get the full readerly benefit of her skills - she gives us a novel about trust, deception, sistership, motherhood, murder, love - the gamut of daily emotion.  She also gives us a fantastic heroine whose character undergoes tremendous development.  The novel is layered, interesting and very tense as well as intense.  I remember sitting down to read it and hunching my back and clenching my fist thinking "no no no".  It takes a writer pretty much at the top of their game to tap into a reader's emotion as strongly as this.

Every bit of this book was believable.  I loved the flawed Ruby and the senselessly brave Jinn.  I yearned for everything to go right for them, but of course, you'll have to read the book to find out if it does.  I'll allow myself one further bit of advice: have tissues ready.

Find Gillian's website here.  The Opposite of Amber is published by Bloomsbury here in the UK.

**Interview With YA Author: Gillian Philip**

After reading Crossing The Line, I made contact with the author, Gillian Philip and begged her to pop by for an author interivew. And she agreed, which thrilled me no end.

Photo by Les Hester

1. Please introduce yourself to us.

I’m an obsessive writer and I’ve been writing all my life – give or take a few periods of denial, when I tried to do – ahem - ‘proper’ jobs. I live in the north-east Highlands of Scotland with my husband, seven-year-old twins, a Labrador and two cats. I lived in Barbados for twelve years – that’s where I started writing professionally (I couldn’t get a work permit, so I contributed short stories to women’s magazines back home). But Scotland is definitely my natural habitat – as are Young Adult novels. I discovered them in the children’s section of bookshops after my kids were born, and that’s when I found what I truly wanted to write.

2. What is Bad Faith all about?

It’s the story of a girl called Cassandra, who has a dodgy leg, a dodgy boyfriend, and a seriously dodgy memory. Bad Faith is set in a state ruled by theocratic government, and Cass’s father is a respected cleric, so she’s had a privileged life. But after a car accident, there’s a period in her life she has trouble remembering – and her family seems to be harbouring some terrible secrets.

Then Cass and her infidel boyfriend Ming find the corpse of a missing bishop - and decide that he has to stay missing. That’s when things really start to go wrong...

3. Tell us a bit about your newest novel, Crossing the Line.

It’s about a boy called Nick Geddes who has done some terrible things. After the killing of a boy a year ago he’s trying to turn his life round, but it’s complicated. Nick is in love and lust with the dead boy’s sister, but he’s also having to keep an eye on his own deranged sister and her imaginary friend. Things take a turn for the worse when a dangerous figure reappears from Nick’s past.

4. How did the story for Crossing the Line come to you?

I always have trouble thinking back to the exact moment a story started. I do remember the spark of a particularly shocking knife murder a few years ago. The characters grew in my head when I was out for a walk one day – Allie started out as a boy, and I never knew Nick was such a thug till I started to write him. But they took over, the way characters do, and told me their stories. Lola Nan was very vociferous!

5. Both Allie and Nick are fantastic characters – do you think you will at a later stage return to their lives?

I don’t think so. Never say never, but I think their stories have been told now. I hope their lives go well. Maybe they’ll let me know...

6. Tell us a bit more about the Darke Academy and when we can expect to see it in the shops.

The Darke Academy is a school with secrets. It’s a truly international school in that it moves to a different location every term, and the students come from all over the world. But as my scholarship heroine discovers, they are an even more cosmopolitan bunch than they seem on the surface. And the school brings a whole new meaning to the term student body.

I collaborated on the Darke Academy series with Hothouse Fiction – they are the company responsible for the Darkside books, which I thought were terrific. Hothouse provided the outline and I wrote the story with input from the editors. It was a new and different way for me to work, and I enjoyed it a lot.

7. What is your writing day like?

I’m terrible at getting started. I have a coffee, and then another. I fill the dishwasher. I do emails, I go on Facebook. Anything rather than write. But once I get started I try to stay in my chair and focused. And if it’s going well – whoosh. I can write through till evening. That doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s amazing.

8. What do you do to relax and unwind?

Write. I know, that sounds sad! Well, I do love to go for long walks, and if I can motivate myself, a workout at the gym is fantastic. But if I’m not writing, I feel so guilty that it’s best just to get back to it. I love movies, especially thrillers or good superhero movies or epics, but about halfway through I’ll think of something for my story, and I’ll be hankering after my laptop so much I can’t concentrate.

9. Does music play an important part of you, writing scenes / creating characters.

Absolutely. I like to have a whole unique soundtrack for each book, and I’ll play it over and over again to get me into the right mindset. Songs can be a wonderful trigger for atmosphere and theme. I got four books out of John Cale singing Hallelujah...

Image from Gillian's website

10. I notice on your site that you are very active doing talks and workshops at schools and libraries – how do you prepare for them and what do you talk about?

I’d like to be even more active! I really enjoy doing talks and workshops, getting feedback from readers. I like to talk about my own writing process, about how I got started and also why it took so long for me – all the things that get in the way of being a writer. If someone can write and wants to write, they shouldn’t waste time not writing (like I did). All you have to do is start. I find that ideas and plots come when I get started, not before, so I talk about that, about breaking down the barriers between the writer and the story.

11. Who is the most famous person you’ve met in your “job” as an author?

Oh – hard question! I’m lucky enough to be a member of a children’s writers’ internet group, where I’ve ‘met’ terrific authors like Susan Price and Mary Hoffman and Leslie Wilson and many others... Oh, and I’ve met Ian Rankin in the flesh, but I was far too starstruck to do more than mumble.

12. Are there any “how to” books that you have on your shelf that’s helped you with your own writing?

The best writing book I’ve ever read is On Writing by Stephen King. He’s realistic, he’s helpful, he’s so readable... and he’s very entertaining.

13. Will you be touring for Crossing the Line (she asks, desperately wanting her copy signed)?

I hope I’ll be getting out and about, definitely!

14. You specifically write for the young adult market – what made you choose this “sub-genre” (if you can call it that) in children’s literature.

I was drawn to the YA shelves when I was looking for books for my own children. There was such a great range of stories, such terrific plots and characters, so many wonderful authors; I’d discovered what I wanted to write. There’s a lot of scope for crossing boundaries in YA fiction, and it’s a great, open-minded, passionate audience to write for. One thing it’s not about is ‘writing down’. I like to steal a quote from YA imprint Flux Books – ‘Young Adult is a point of view, not a reading level.’

15. Do you have favourite movies / books that influence your writing at all?

Lots! I see my books inside my head as if I’m watching a movie, and I try to leave out the parts where I’d wander away to get some more popcorn...
I try not to read much fiction while I’m immersed in my own stories, because I’m afraid of the style ‘leaking’ and affecting mine. But there are so many authors I love – Bernard Cornwell, Malorie Blackman, Ruth Rendell... and I’m completely in awe of Russell T. Davies. That man is my idol.

16. Finally, any recommendations on either “how to” books or favourite authors / books, that influenced you and your career decisions.

There are so many ‘how-to’ books – I can’t recommend better than Stephen King’s – but it’s too easy to get hung up on reading them all. You can take good advice, but the only way to learn how to write is to sit down and do it, and do it again, and do it again. Get objective feedback – pay for it if necessary; there are lots of companies that provide manuscript services. You have to be determined, and you have to have talent, and you have to be willing to listen to criticism and take rejection – but if you have all that, don’t ever be discouraged by naysayers.

Crossing the Line by Gillian Philip

Synopsis:

Nick Geddes is the loneliest thug in school, but that’s not entirely his own fault. True, he should never have thrown in his lot with the homicidal Kev Naughton in the first place, but he's trying to live down his past.

It isn’t his fault his mother is a New Age hippy chick with a mortifying god-slot on local radio; as far as he knows it isn't him who drives his father to drink. Nick isn’t the one who hangs out shoplifting with an imaginary friend: that’s his deranged sister Allie.

Worst of all, the girl he loves hates him with a passion, and that's understandable. But it wasn't Nick who stabbed Orla Mahon's brother to death with a kitchen knife...

Interested yet? You should be.

Firstly, let me tell you what this novel isn't about: Crossing the Line isn't about the action act, or knife crime (which is so much the topic these days in the newspapers and on TV), it isn't about making excuses, it isn't about gangs, it isn't about gratuitous violence - instead it is about what went before and what came after and how a stupid pointless act committed by a scared boy trying to save face created a whole world of problems for those left behind.

Beautifully written from Nick's point of view, the story skips backwards and forwards, telling the story of his sister Allie, his own involvement in a gang of bullies and how he walked away from that, to his own detriment and that of his sister. It tells the story of Allie's strangeness and how she fell in love with Aidan and how, after his murder, she's conjured him to be her imaginary friend. Nick's parents are not emotionally equipped to deal with his problems, or his sister's as she seems to be going off the rails and definitely not his nan's rapid decline.

In other words, Nick has a lot going on. And for all his surly ways, he is immensely likeable. His character is handled with ease and his emotions are explored with great sensitivity. There is also a lot of humour, some black, some wry and some laugh out loud funny. It takes a very talented author to broach a topic such as knife crime and tell it from the point of view of one of the perceived baddies.

The novel is very easy to read. My favourite character through all of this is Allie - with her strange ways and imaginary boyfriend by her side. There is something so vulnerable about her character that I fell for her hook line and sinker. It doesn't mean that she's annoying or wimpy - she's just tougher in other ways than Nick - where he is all muscle and brawn and scowls his way through school and conversations, she's quiet, quick and maybe a bit manipulative.

I thought that Nick's character could have gone badly wrong - he could have been a truly unlikeable character, one that you do not have any empathy for and somehow resent reading about. Instead his motivations are explained with great care and you can see where he comes from and why he acts the way he does. A very good creation and to be honest, it was like having a window into the head of some of the surly kids I see hanging around our local offie.

Crossing the Line is an excellent read for ages of 11+. I did some searching and found the author, Gillian Philip's very cool looking website here. It's fantastic to see how much work she currently has on. Crossing the Line is published by Bloomsbury and will be available during the first week of April.