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BfK No. 149 - November 2004

Cover Story
This issue's cover illustration is from Julia Donaldson's The Gruffalo's Child, illustrated by Axel Sheffler. Axel Scheffler is interviewed by Martin Salisbury. Thanks to Macmillan Children's Books for their help with this November cover.

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Sharp North

Patrick Cave
(Simon & Schuster Ltd)
432pp, 978-0689872761, RRP £12.99, Paperback
14+ Secondary/Adult
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This densely written novel takes a long time to read and must also have taken an age to write. It describes a miserable post-flood, freezing Britain at some date in the future run by a corrupt oligarchy expert in spying and oppression. Life for everyone else is hard and degrading, with natural resources at a premium and rubbish piling up on every street corner. Enter Mira, a determined young woman living far in the North who wants to discover why her name was on a list handed to her just before its bearer was murdered. Her search takes her into a labyrinth of intrigue, plotting and near-escapes, during which time she discovers her own terrible secret. Known to her controllers simply as a 'spare', she is in fact a cloned version of one of the ruling class, there just in case any of her organs are ever needed for a quick transplant. Cave is a workmanlike rather than an inspired writer. He tells his story straight and without verbal blemish, yet the whole project begins to unravel about a hundred pages before the end - why not some judicious editing? An already complex plot becomes increasingly opaque, and some genuinely tense stand-offs begin to lose their punch through sheer repetition. Dialogue is at times either demanding, including some half-translated passages in French, or else startling when it comes to outbreaks of four-letter words. Even so, it's impossible not to admire the persistence of the writing and the ambition of its wholesale attack on our own government's current geo-political outlook, roundly attacked in a short end-piece by the author under his own name. Like a long, cold walk in winter, reading this book can be hard work at the time but still feels well worth it afterwards on reflection.

Reviewer: 
Nicholas Tucker
3
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