Will is home-schooled, spends his time Inside with his painting projects and his agoraphobic mother until the night he heard a bang and ventured Outside for the first time.
Christie writes beautiful prose from the start with snatches of humor and wonderful insight. I couldn't recommend enough just for that. But there is so much more. A wonderfully paced novel that sees Will ventures out more and more even dropping the protective bike helmet all to the despair of his mother.
On his adventures and through school he meets up with Jonah who opens up new worlds to him including the joys and dangers of skateboarding.
“Shit,” Will said, swearing credibly for the first time, but still too afraid to enjoy it.
My one issue (for want of a better word) is the rather strange and sickly-sweet ending. Maybe I am trying to pick faults in this rather excellent novel.
This is why I love reading debut novels, they can be so very incredible.
Please read this book if you enjoy the written word, the prose is so very very beautiful.
Other sensations, too, unmistakable as neon: a dull pain throughout, a soreness to her blood, a twisting in her gut, stardust in her fingertips. It would pass, a mere miscalculation of an errant brain that found danger where there was none, that saw a lion instead of the lamb before her.
4½/5
