Trinity Street is a late-90s Australian YA novel that involves telepathy and time-travel. I first read it in high school, and I remembered clearly the things I liked about it, and the things I found unsatisfying.

So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the way it was written. (And I don't mean Gerhardt's habit of using phrases in other languages, which appealed to teenaged-me.) I really liked the way Odgers captures Tell's world: her friendship with Camena, and how Tell feels when Gerhardt intrudes on that; her relationship with her divorced parents; the way Tell responds when things go wrong.

I've seen YA literature described as as "You mean books about Super Special White Girl and Her Mysterious Brooding Boyfriend?" and that's a criticism that one could throw at Trinity Street. However, I think Trinity Street tries to subvert those tropes. Tell is critical of mysterious brooding and romantic overtures. And there's something affirming about the discovery of her unique talent, because she's grown up comparing herself to Camena, who is academically gifted (and also tragically orphaned), and legitimately feeling ordinary by comparison. Tell's eventual super-special status feels earned, somehow. Perhaps because it veers more towards "everyone has different talents and that's okay!", rather than arguing that some people are more special than others.

If Camena was a moth, [Tell] was an earnest caterpillar, humping grimly along the plath laid out for her by the clash of her parents' oddly assorted genes.
David the perfectionist, cold, clever and abrupt as steel. Maureen the slapdash, mercurial, and untidy. There was enough of David in Tell's make-up to make her impatient with fools, and enough of Maureen to make her goals recede when something more attractive beckoned. Enough of Maureen to make her untidy, enough of David to make her feel guilty about it. Because of her parents, Tell was usually at war with herself, and, unlike her parents, Tell could not file for a divorce and go their separate ways. ( )