Shadow Woods
by Roberta Bajada
Roberta Bajada is best known for her fiction for teens. Novels such as Arloġġ u Tila and its sequel Arlekkin Isfar combine elements of fantasy, time travel, mystery and adventure in a blend that appeals particularly to that age group.
Shadow Woods, winner of the 2025 Terramaxka Prize for Children and Young Adults in the Young Adult Literature category, is directed at older readers and carries a darker edge, drawing on the haunted, unsettling small-town Americana associated with authors such as Stephen King. The novel revolves around an abandoned theme park deep in the Texas woodlands. In August 2018, after learning that his uncle is terminally ill, Daniel returns with his wife and two young children to the place where he grew up, hoping to heal rifts that had arisen three decades earlier. The tragic events that led to this estrangement were closely connected to the nearby theme park of Shadow Woods, once at its height in the 1980s and now lying decrepit, awaiting dismantling. As memories resurface and past mysteries are revived, Daniel must dig deep to seek closure and justice for long-buried wrongs.
I must admit that, while the subject intrigued me, I initially harboured some misgivings about the “authenticity” of a novel by a Maltese author, written in Maltese, yet set in the United States. Would it stand up against similar works by American writers who would know the setting at first hand? It did not take long to realise how unfair and limiting such doubts and prejudices were. After all, I routinely read fiction in English set in a wide range of places without raising such objections. Nor should authors be confined to what they have directly experienced; that would be a sorry constraint on the imagination. Setting these reservations aside, I delved into the book and was quickly hooked.
The novel rests on a solid plot, rich in mysteries and gradually disclosed secrets that sustain the reader’s interest. The story itself might not particularly novel and in part relies on some tried-and-tested horror and suspense tropes. Yet Bajada introduces enough distinctive touches to set it apart: the interplay of crime and the supernatural, for instance, and a strikingly imaginative, dreamlike sequence depicting David’s near-death experience. Having grown up in the 1980s, I also appreciated the attentive evocation of the decade through well-judged references to popular culture. One suspects that the novel will not only resonate with its target YA audience, but also with not-so-young adults seeking a good story and a fix of nostalgia.
No comments:
Post a Comment