Take Simone Howell’s remarkable Notes from the Teenage Underground (Pan, $16.95 pb, 294 pp, 0330422669). Three outer-suburban schoolgirls set out to deflect the impending boredom of summer with ‘cool, arty shit’. Their theme is ‘Underground.’ Lo, the edgy leader says, ‘We should be extreme, avant-garde, debauched, anti-establishment, revolutionary.’ Gem, the narrator, pursues the idea of the Andy Warhol era as the inspiration for making a film. She sets out with a feminist script, but films a sort of underground commentary on the chaos that is suburban teenage life. Mira happily takes on the boy-chasing persona. But Lo is quiet, sharp and secretive. Like Gem, the reader fears her anger and destructiveness. She is the one who can charm parents and reassure teachers, but she carries self-inflicted scars. Her pastor father and his wife are immersed in their own world; their way of coping is to send Lo to Christian camp. One winces at the inappropriateness of their response. Gem’s good relationship with her mother is set in deliberate contrast. (They cope with the vicissitudes of life, both good and bad, by choosing an appropriate film and blending in with its mood.) The book captures a period and an attitude with razor-sharp images, and is raw and passionate while dissecting family and school relationships. Is it the new Monkey Grip (1977)?

Similarly, Will, in the eponymous novel Will (Maria Boyd, Random House, $17.95 pb, 320 pp,1741662109), has a protective and affectionate relationship with his mother. He recognises her need to talk, particularly about their shared grief, but wraps himself in a protective bubble that allows no memory, no vulnerability. Will is the likeable, sporty private-school larrikin, always in trouble, always doing just enough to get by. But when he moons the girls’ school bus in a moment’s crazy impulse, it is the last straw. Will’s punishment is to help with the school musical: the province of dorks, geeks and Year Seven students. But one of Will’s teachers (the mentor we would all wish for our sons) believes it will be character building. The dynamics of an intelligent student forced to relate outside his comfort zone are skilfully revealed. Will is an assured first novel in which the author has found an authentic voice. Will’s conversations and his actual thoughts are juxtaposed throughout the book, and the results are both funny and revealing. The dialogue is in bold text, his thoughts and the narration in standard text, and this unsubtle literary device proves very effective.

Monica Bloom (Nick Earls, Penguin, $24.95 pb, 148 pp, 0143004786) also balances the hero’s peer group preoccupations with the difficulties in his home life. Matt’s final year at school in Brisbane, which he had expected to be focused and uneventful, is turned upside down by two very different events. First, he develops an all-consuming crush on Monica Bloom; second, his father loses his high-powered job through no fault of his own. Balances shift: Matt’s father becomes depressed and unmotivated, his mother takes to work and is fulfilled. Through it all, Matt tries to maintain a detached equilibrium. The writing is restrained, almost understated, perhaps too much so for the intended readership. This is a surprise from the often exuberant Nick Earls. But it captures the whirling and vulnerable emotions behind a cool and seemingly perfect middle-class façade.

While the setting of Monica Bloom is middle-class and familiar, The Birthmark (Beth Montgomery, Text, $24.95 pb, 247 pp, 1921145331) intertwines the exotic with the recognisable in this novel of Pacific Island life. On the one hand, the story is about Lily, a contemporary teenager at odds with her mother, hanging out with possible undesirables and risking her reputation for a boy she fancies. The setting, though Pacific Island in flavour, would be familiar to many urban readers – night clubs, alcohol, porn movies, hanging out in cars and boredom. Add a mother whose misplaced attempts at responsible parenting make her abusive and violent. Lily’s world in 2004 is set against the story unfolding on the island in 1942, when the Japanese were invading. Her friend’s grandfather, then a young man full of island dignity, deeply in love, is trying to hold on to what is left of his traditional culture and his belief in himself. The reader is totally engaged and empathetic with both narrative threads, precisely because the tone of the writing is without judgment. This is how it is, or was, and this is how it happened. We read, observe and are so caught up in the veracity of it that when an angry ghost appears, linking both worlds, it seems to belong. The old magic lives on and must be respected.

Randa Abdel-Fattah takes a different approach to cross-cultural observations in Ten Things I Hate about Me (Pan, $16.95 pb, 278 pp, 033042274X). Told in the voice of a contemporary Australian teenager, it is lively, entertaining and very readable. Jamie has been hiding her Lebanese background since Year Seven, dyeing her hair blonde, wearing blue contact lenses, making sure she somehow never invites friends home, and definitely hiding her real name, Jamilah. But in Year Ten things come to a head. Her father resolutely refuses to allow her to go to the school formal. How can she explain that to her friends, particularly to Peter, the most popular boy in the school, who fancies her (but would not if he knew the truth)? Jamie gradually learns to appreciate the richness of her culture, the warmth and support of her wider Lebanese family, and the importance of self-acceptance. She reveals her true self only to an initially anonymous Internet friend, a device which works well as a sort of stream-of-consciousness revelation. It is a pity that Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Western families tend to be painted monochromatically and are stereotypically dysfunctional. Still, the novel is sure to be widely popular and will doubtless help foster understanding across the Muslim–West divide.

Cross-cultural families are also a theme in Kirsty Murray’s The Secret Life of Maeve Lee Kwong (Allen & Unwin, $15.95 pb, 252 pp, 1865087378), the final title in her Children of the Wind quartet. Maeve is a cheerful Sydney schoolgirl, a dancer who is proud of her artistic mother and her baby brother, and tolerant of her stepfather. When her mother is killed in a car accident, her secure world disintegrates. She is sent to live with her conservative Chinese grandparents, whose expectations are often at odds with Australian teenage cultural life. Murray paints with a broad brush in big, colourful sweeps. The contrast between Maeve’s cheerful, arty inner-Sydney home and the plush formality of her grandparents’ apartment is vivid, and one feels for the child shrinking under the quiet sadness of it all. But Maeve is resourceful and is surrounded by supportive people – even those against whom she rebels. It is one of the delights of Murray’s writing that even her ‘difficult’ characters have their good side. Her novels are reassuring and full of hope, even though tough things happen; an uplifting sort of ‘hero’s journey’. Almost unbelievable coincidences in the plot are forgivable because the story is so resolutely persuasive.

Similarly good-natured is Judith Clarke’s charming One Whole and Perfect Day (Allen & Unwin, $16.95 pb, 286 pp, 1741148561), a delicious and audacious piece of writing that weaves realism and ‘escapist’ fiction, with utterly convincing results. Lily struggles with the burden of being a reliable teenager: a boon to her mother and a dork to her schoolmates. Her brother, Lonnie, has moved out of home because he seems a no-hoper in that environment and needs to dream. Their grandmother chats to an invisible friend, and their grandfather is judgmental and difficult, but impulsively generous. When May decides to throw a party, everything builds up to one perfect day, impossibly but believably, so. Clarke seduces with the kindly coincidence in her plot and the lovely imagery of her names – Rose, Lily, Marigold, May, Clara. Perfect, satisfying and elegant – a great antidote to exams and the like.

In Jaclyn Moriarty’s cleverly constructed The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie (Pan, $16.95 pb, 468 pp, 0330422383), families fade into the background (though Bindy’s ‘motivated’ father is unforgettable in his cameo off-stage role). Rather, the school group takes centre stage: in this case, the Friendship and Development Group. Bindy, who is a high achiever, is hurt by her fellow students’ comments in a sharing exercise and sets out to wreak revenge or gain acceptance. The novel starts out in classic teen-angst diary form, the reader lulled into believing that that this is the usual adolescent friendship story. But more sinister things are going on, and the reader is hoodwinked – along with Bindy and her class. How easy to ignore obvious clues when one is expecting something different.

School groups are also most important in Melina Marchetta’s On the Jellicoe Road (Penguin, $24.95 pb, 290 pp, 0670070297). Every year, there are territory wars at the Jellicoe School between the boarders, the townies and the visiting cadets. Taylor, leader of the boarders, is the unwilling negotiator and strategist, a role made more complicated by her relationship with the cadet leader. But she is also distracted with worry by the disappearance of Hannah, who has been a sort of mother figure to her. The plot unfolds, entwined with the story told in Hannah’s manuscript, fragments of which Taylor has been reading. Gradually, it becomes clear that the intense story told in the manuscript and Taylor’s almost hallucinatory dreams reveal much about her family’s past. The familiar themes one associates with Marchetta’s previous novels are present: the search for identity, responsibility, and loyalty as integral to family life. But the device of the boarding-school game, the territory wars, is a strange one. At times, I felt as though I had wandered into a John Marsden novel in the Tomorrow series, but without the conviction. Would teenagers really behave like that? It is a perplexing but engrossing work.

The Young Adult literary world in Australia is rich indeed. The short stories of Margo Lanagan blaze with startling power and originality. Red Spikes (Allen & Unwin, $17.95 pb, 216 pp, 1741146577) follows her highly acclaimed White Time (2000) and Black Juice (2004). These are highly imaginative short stories, disturbing in their oddness, not least because the settings are often familiar but skewed. A young boy finds himself using his mother’s midwifery skills for a strange queen who has invaded his family home with her servant and a bear. The telling is lucid, full of moonlight, warm breath and fear. In another story, a community is invaded by the ‘bachelors’ when the dominant male loses position. It is horrifying, but one is left wondering if the outcome could actually be for the best. Every story is unexpected. Lanagan’s books are to be approached in a state of fearful, delighted anticipation. Which is precisely what one would expect from the best Young Adult fiction.