This ought to be a nice little story, an award-winning YA coming-of-age
tale of fourteen year old Henry, set in a not-quite-settled post-war
England, learning that his assumptions about people are not always
accurate. Yet none of it worked for me. So what went wrong? Firstly, the
characters are so simplistic it’s hard to take them seriously. There’s a
harassed mum, a bratty sister, a truly nasty and parasitic gran, a
working class stepdad studying to better himself. There’s the angelic
Mrs Beaumont, who waves her magic wand and makes good things happen.
There’s the inspirational teacher, Mr Finch. Henry himself is
ridiculously dorkish to start with, before being shown the error of his
ways.
And secondly, none of this is subtle. All those Henry
despises - the illegitimate schoolfriend, the deserter’s son, the
stepdad who has stolen away his mother and inflicted the bratty daughter
on the house - turn out to be perfectly nice, sensible people. Those he
likes - his dead dad, his granny - turn out to be less than nice. Maybe
it’s meant to be allegorical or some kind of fairy tale reworking, or
maybe it’s aimed at quite a young demographic, but I found it dull and
predictable. I gave up on it, so possibly there are some dramatic twists
further down the road, but I had no interest in finding out. One star
for a DNF.
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