We move constantly between Nicu’s perspective and Jess’s, the poems dovetailing impressively as the lives of the two characters collide. Still, a collaboration can be risky, but there’s no sense of disharmony here.
Conaghan is no stranger to success either, bagging the Costa children’s book award the same year for The Bombs That Brought Us Together. The lyrical style has worked well for Crossan in the past, landing her the 2016 Carnegie medal for a heart-wrenching tale of conjoined twins in One.
Poetry emerges from the everyday struggles of Nicu, a Romanian immigrant, and Jess, a shoplifter with an abusive stepfather. This is a verse novel, consummately crafted, where the position of each word on the page is as important as its meaning. The problems faced by the characters might be familiar, but the experimental form is not. Co-authors Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan create an all-too-recognisable world of knife crime, domestic abuse, immigration, forced marriage, teenage pregnancy, bullying and racism, rooted firmly in Brexit Britain. A t first glance, We Come Apart could be mistaken for a wearisome “issues” novel.
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