Bob's Best

It’s a big, warm welcome to Bob Docherty who will be kicking off Bob’s Best, a fortnightly Friday review of two selected young adult fiction for Creating Readers. Over to you Bob...

Losing It by Sandy McKay. Pub. Longacre Press, Dunedin, 2007.

The cover describes this New Zealand novel as... "profound, heartfelt: a landmark novel," and that’s exactly what it is.

Fifteen-year-old Jo is in hospital when her anorexic condition reaches crisis point. At the time she is writing to her friend Issy who (in poignant contrast) is living the life Jo should be leading.

Jo's mother went missing presumed dead when Jo was 11, and she still refuses to see her father. And while she corresponds with her younger brother she is unable to see the effects her anorexia is having on herself, family and friends. But it is Issy that provides the outlet for Jo's point of view and through their correspondence the reader finally begins to understand the cause of Jo’s anorexia.

Sandy McKay not only has a real understanding of anorexia nervosa, but she’s acutely aware of the tensions and stress it plays on families. But this is also a hopeful novel, one that reaches an optimistic conclusion.

I discussed this book with a class of year 7/8 girls and it was the story that they most wanted to share, the book is appropriate for female secondary school students.






Flashpoint by Frances Cherry. Pub. Scholastic, Auckland 2006.

I could be harsh about this book because the plot is so contrived, but I won’t, for two reasons, the book is both positive and hopeful, and we know a book without hope is, well, a hopeless waste of time.

Charlotte's life is happy, and privileged as the opening chapter reveals through Charlotte’s birthday – one full of smulchy suburban contentment. But the next day things change… for the worse. Dad leaves, declaring there is no one else (but we know there is). Charlotte’s mother is utterly distraught and the family begins to face the inevitable agonies of the separation. We meet Dad’s new girlfriend, Charlotte’s bother gives everyone the silent treatment, Mum turns to drink, there’s an opportunist land agent and an erratic family dog. Oh the agony!

But somehow it works and works out in the end - even though it is hard to understand why Charlotte’s father would call on his ex wife for support over his girlfriends’ difficulty pregnancy! Oh dear, oh dear. Will there be reconciliation? Does Charlotte live happily ever after? Read it and find out.

Suitable for secondary students.