Litle Bang by Kelly McCaughrain
Book of the Week: 2 June 2024
Cover illustration by Andrew Bannecker
It’s New Year’s Eve in Belfast and Sid is telling his mum, Lucille, that he is going to a house party to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. Sid comes across as the archetypal ‘bad boy’ with his half-shaved head, eybrow piercings and ‘attitude’ and his mother is convinced that he’s going to be brought home in a police car, and not for the first time. What Sid doesn’t tell her is that he will be ‘up Conclare Hill seeing the New Year in with the smartest, quietest girl in school…’
Mel (‘the smartest, quietest girl in school’) is a physics geek who lives with her strict parents, her sister Leah and Leah’s husband ‘Smug Nigel’ who spends his time moralising whilst being ‘between jobs’. Mel got to know Sid in History class when the teacher moved him to sit by her to prevent him being distruptive. Surprisingly, they sparked off one another and have secretly arranged to meet up with their friends to sit in a tent with a bonfire and beers on New Year’s Eve. The evening turns into a first date, one thing leads to another and, as a result, Mel finds she is pregnant.
We hear the rest of their story from their individual points of view, from their initial dread of telling their parents, to the response of their school and their friends and the situation in Northern Ireland at the time. The story is set in 2018, when the Irish abortion referendum was being held. However, abortion was still illegal in Northern Ireland until 2019 and Mel and Sid feel they have very little support and even less useful information. The examination of their plight never gets in the way of the enjoyment of getting to know them both, plus the various well-drawn people around them. Circumstances aside, this is an involving, thoughtful, and sometimes funny look at growing up and making extremely difficult choices.
Suitable for older readers. A note in the book on content reads: ‘Please be aware that the following pages contain discussions of – and references to – teenage pregnancy, abortion and miscarriage.’
Books with similar themes include Trouble by Non Pratt. When Hannah falls pregnant, new boy Aaron offers to claim he is the baby’s father to save her revealing who he really is.
Boys Don’t Cry by Malorie Blackman. Dante is waiting for his A-level results when his ex-girlfriend turns up with their baby daughter, leaves her with him and doesn’t come back.