The H-Bomb Girl - Stephen Baxter

The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter (UK / US) is probably a Young Adult (YA) novel. I say probably, because the YA label is vague and subject to change, just like any genre label. However the marketing clues are there, it's published by Faber and Faber rather than one of the usual suspect genre imprints (although of course The Carhullan Army, another Clarke short listed novel is published by Faber and Faber too), and the artwork is bright, pink and quite groovy, but definitely not a stereotypical SF cover (although it does have a quote on the front by Paul Cornell saying that if you like Doctor Who, you'll like this). Inside, and the novel itself provide more pointers towards being YA, with the main protagonist being a teenage girl. However, this novel is most definitely SF. (This is the second Clarke 2008 shortlisted book where I have felt the need to say that, which says either a lot about the Clarke, or a lot about the current SF scene.)

The story follows a young girl, Laura, who has moved to Liverpool from the south of England in 1962, around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Laura is stuck amidst a turbulent household, her parents are separating, her father is in the RAF, her mother longs for the good old days of the war and has an American military man, an old flame, as a lodger.

Baxter grew up not far from Liverpool and obviously has a lot of passion for the place. I can't personally attest to the accuracy of the period details, it being before my time, but it feels like all those stories your hear about the early swinging sixties. The book also captures the dread of living under the threat of nuclear extinction, something which is said to have seemed perilously close during that crisis.

The pace of the novel is fairly slow at the outset, much of the story dealing with Laura coping with being a newcomer in Liverpool, but it's a nice read. There are mysteries dotted around slowly, and eventually the plot builds to quite a head with intrigue and twists. Personally the plot twists didn't come as too much of a surprise, given the generous signposts, but for readers unused to SF they may come as a shock. It's an entertaining plot, and there's nothing really wrong with it, but at the same time I can't say it's brilliant, it's just good. That is, all bar one short section of the book, which deals with a Threads-esque aftermath of a nuclear war. Those few pages are brilliant. And I have to agree with what Roz Kaveney said at Eastercon, nothing else in the book lives up to that section.

So if you ignore the YA aspect, which I guess will win some readers hearts (and maybe those will be new SF readers), it is a decent SF tale with a spectacular splash of post-apocalyptic horror. I'm slightly surprised it made the Clarke shortlist, but it's worth reading.