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Newly-published novel Gramma was this year’s surprise best-seller at the National Book Festival. Aimed at teenagers, the story is a snapshot into 14-year-old Analiża’s life: her loves and her struggles. It also includes her battle with anorexia.

“But the novel is not a moral lesson on anorexia,” said debut author Leanne Ellul. The teen-friendly style of writing, the mundane, secondary school setting of the plot and the non-judgmental approach used throughout for such a complex subject as anorexia are probably the novel’s winning features with young readers.

Gramma is a fictional book, inspired, however, by Leanne’s own personal experiences and brings out the reality of the pain of those suffering from eating disorders.

“My aim in Gramma was not to tell my own personal story of how I dealt with my eating disorder, nor to try and give readers tips and suggestions,” Ellul, 25, said.

“We need more books for adolescents which, rather than trying to lecture or instil fear in them, encourage them to think more deeply about the decisions they make, but at the same time still offer the beautiful experience that comes with reading any good book.”

The novel won the Young Adult Literature Award in 2014, after which the author worked with a Merlin Publishers editor on the original text prior to publishing it in November. Ellul is also a past winner of the Francis Ebejer award for playwrights.

The novel is not a moral lesson on anorexia

Merlin Publishers director Chris Gruppetta said that the book’s popularity was a welcome surprise as young adults read less and, crucially, read much less in Maltese.

“Street cred is the be-all and end-all at that age, and countless beautifully-written young adult novels in Maltese have struggled to attract their elusive audience,” he said. Gramma, he said, “was easily the fastest selling book at the Malta Book Festival and sales figures kept rising in the follow-up to the festival”.

“It is possibly the only Maltese young adult novel to have featured in the Agenda chain’s Top 10 charts. I don’t recall any such reaction to a Maltese young adult novel, excepting perhaps Pierre J. Mejlak’s seminal Riħ Isfel, which had arguably created the genre in Malta.”

Gramma is available from all bookshops or online.

www.merlinpublishers.com

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