‘The higher you climb, the further you have to fall…’
I don’t come to literature for biting social commentary, not really. Sure, I admire the anti-war stance of Catch-22, but I love that novel because it’s absolutely hilarious. The Hunger Games probably has something interesting to say about class, but I was much more concerned with the character dynamics and the plot. It’s for this reason that I didn’t really enjoy Naomi Alderman’s novel The Power – a book that sees a literal transfer of power from men to women. With that book, if you strip away the concept, there isn’t enough underneath it to make the whole thing worthwhile. Noughts and Crosses occasionally strays into this territory but Malorie Blackman wisely chooses to concentrate on characters and plotting rather than concept – something that is handy as I’m not really sure if this particular concept (society is segregated post slavery but with the white population being the underclass) actually adds much of anything at all…
Callum and Sephy are very different. Callum is slightly older and is often discriminated against because he is a nought (white). His mother has to take a series of difficult and degrading jobs and he is eventually forced out of the almost all black school that he was initially so excited to earn a place at. Sephy is the daughter of a powerful Cross politician and due to her privileged upbringing she is naïve to the true ways of a harsh and unforgiving world. Noughts and Crosses is the story of Callum and Sephy and how their lives intertwine over a number of years.
While I wasn’t fully taken on the concept, the decision to have Callum and Sephy as dual narrators pays off in spades as the reader essentially receives two very different accounts of the same events. This allows Blackman to drive home the differences between the two characters – both in terms of personality and circumstance. The supporting characters are also affecting if a little unoriginal with Callum’s militant brother Jude perhaps being the most compelling.
The other great strength of Noughts and Crosses is the show-stopping ending. It’s rare to find a conclusion so bold and so captivating in the YA genre, but Blackman’s abrupt curtain fall here fits perfectly within the grim world in which the novel takes place.
I enjoyed Noughts and Crosses, perhaps not enough to read the numerous sequels, but enough to recommend it to others. Fans of the YA genre will certainly not be disappointed.