Staying Up

by Robert Swindells

Published 27 November 1986
Brian Gower is fifteen and supports Barfax Town soccer team. He does well in school but, living in a noisy overcrowded home where he can't study, wonders if it's worth the effort. Debbie likes Brian but she can't stand soccer and won't go to games with him. If her parents had their way, their daughter would never go out at all. She would sit in their spotless house watching "educational" TV. This is a hard-hitting novel about teenagers growing up in a North of England industrial city depressed by unemployment and poverty. Many of their concerns and experiences will be familiar to American readers; some will be quite new. Like the local soccer team, and against the odds, Debbie and Brian are doing the best they can to stay up. "It is about parental culture and youthful anarchy, school versus sex and soccer, a prissy girl's involvement with a wild boy...splendid." -- The Guardian (London)

Brother in the Land

by Robert Swindells

Published 5 April 1984

Denny, a teenager, is one of the unlucky ones, a survivor, one of those who have come through a nuclear war alive. In plain language he sets down all that has happened to him, what he sees, and what he feels in the first days after the bomb has dropped.