From Publishers Weekly
British author Doyle convincingly traces an orphaned 14-year-old's transformation from a mute and angry boy who shuns human contact to a young man coming to terms with his past and seeking the company of others. Narrator Georgie is about to move from the institution in which he currently lives to a new home in Wales. Readers quickly learn that there's nowhere to go but up: the room he is leaving consists of a bare mattress on the floor (I wreck everything, that's why. Everything they give me, everything I ever owned. I rip it, break it or piss on it). But his quarters at the new home come furnished with a proper bed, stereo and mirror. Through the trust in and companionship with a patient and kind teacher, and the budding friendship with a kindred spirit, Shannon, Georgie gradually begins to reach out and even to speak. Slowly, he uncovers the horrible memories that have caused his retreat into silence. Several chapters from Shannon's point of view offer a bigger picture of the school and the other students. At times, the level of sophistication at which the boy can articulate his feelings seems implausible, however, especially since he was institutionalized at about age seven (for example, when a new orderly comes to deliver his medication and he pulls her hair, I want to lift up her hair and crawl inside, hide from my anger, hide from myself, hide from the me that makes people afraid). But his actions and responses to the world around him are so convincing that readers will likely overlook these narrative inconsistencies. Georgie's uplifting story demonstrates what a few people who genuinely care can do for another human being. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 7-10 Terror, rage, and a total inability to deal with the horrors that life has brought him have left Georgie isolated in the most extreme ways. At 14, he does not speak, cannot read or write, and spends his days alone in a room that has been stripped of anything that he could break or destroy. A new flood of rage occurs when Georgie learns that he is being sent to a different residential home, another change he is ill equipped to handle. Once there, though, he meets Tommo, a teacher with an uncanny ability to reach damaged children, and Shannon, a girl who has begun to heal from the traumas of her own life. The love and acceptance he feels at his new school and permission to grieve for his murdered mother allow him, too, to take steps toward recovery. Narrated by Georgie, with occasional first-person accounts by Shannon, the novel brilliantly takes readers inside a damaged psyche. British terminology and descriptions of the rural Welsh countryside provide an external environment in which the story of an inner journey is rooted. Everyday events such as eating meals with others are fraught with overwhelming emotion in this teen's world, a very real place into which readers are drawn. While both Georgie and Shannon at times sound surprisingly insightful about their problems, on the whole this book is exceptionally well crafted, from its gripping opening to its hopeful conclusion. It's a perfect hand-sell and a book with punch for teens who go for emotionally wrenching fiction. -Faith Brautigam, Gail Borden Public Library, Elgin, IL
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
