Boy A

Hi everybody,
A thought for a future read:

Boy A, by Jonathan Trigell (Serpent's Tail, £7.99)
Jonathan Trigell's story of a juvenile killer, which was originally published in 2004, has been reissued to accompany the recent Channel 4 film. As a 12-year-old, Jack (not his real name) was convicted of a murder which outraged the nation. Now in his early 20s, he is given a new identity and the chance of a fresh start as a driver's mate for a delivery firm in Manchester. Trigell brilliantly depicts the pressures of living with a terrible secret. An average night out with the lads spells disaster as a spiked drink breaches the terms of his probation. And as he's someone who has never known love, it's devastating to witness Jack's developing affection for a girl at the depot, when any relationship is inevitably doomed due to his strange amnesia and the unaccountable blanks in his biography. Above all, the hero emerges as someone who deserves better - there's a teasing ambiguity as to whether he's guilty or not - and it is written with a naive clarity which evokes the unfamiliar wonders of the outside world: telephone wires which "drape like bunting"; church pillars "thick as God's thighs". Alfred Hickling

(http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/roundupstory/0,,2223930,00.html)

Am finding Shakespeare's Wife a grievous chore! In the words of Will Ferrell as evil fashion designer and eighties record producer Mugatu in Zoolander: 'I fell like I'm taking crazy pills!'

Have a great festive period,
See you all in January,
Bhupash