Cascades - "Homebird" (Collins Cascades) - Hardcover

Blacker, Terence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0003300951 ISBN 13: 9780003300956

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995

Synopsis

Seen through the eyes of 13 year-old Nicky, this novel tells of running away and growing up. Issues like homelessness, poverty, family break-up and teenage crime are dealt with in a sensitive, yet often humorous way.

About this title

About the Author:

Terence Blacker is the author of the best-selling MS WIZ books. THE TRANSFER, the HOTSHOTS series about a girls' football team, picture books, and adult novels. He has taught creative writing at the University of East Anglia, is a magazine and newspaper columnist, critic, and commentator on the publishing industry. He lives in west London and Norfolk.

From Publishers Weekly:

This novel, in the tradition of Paula Fox's Monkey Island , will fascinate anyone who has ever imagined what it would be like to slip "from the cozy, secure world of right and wrong and fridges and table manners and TV every night into the cold outside where the only success is to survive another day." Nicky, 13, runs away from his British boarding school after his altruistic defense of a fellow student earns him a brutal beating. Nicky's plans to return home are stymied, however, when he discovers his father is having an affair. Angry and virtually penniless, the boy hooks up with the teenaged residents of a Brixton "squat" and drifts into a life of crime. Authentically adolescent, Nicky's voice manages to achieve just the right balance between sarcasm and sensitivity; all that is trite and cloying is avoided--or as Nicky says "Now, whoa there--check that major cliche attack." The wisecracking first-person narrative, peppered with thumbnail sketches of various characters and snatches of imagined screenplay dialogue, along with a bouncy MTV-like style of quick cutting from one scene to the next, makes this an ideal book for reluctant readers. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0003300951
• ISBN 13: 9780003300956
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 134