The Boy with Two Heads - Hardcover

Andy Mulligan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857560670 ISBN 13: 9780857560674

Publisher: David Fickling Books, 2013

Synopsis

How would you feel if you woke up and found another head growing out of your neck? What's more it's a living, breathing, talking head, with a rude, sharp tongue and an evil sense of humour. It knows all your darkest thoughts and it's not afraid to say what it thinks. To anybody. That's exactly what happens to eleven-year-old Richard Westlake. Prepare to be stunned. Part thriller, part horror, part comedy - this is one of the most riveting novels about fear and friendship that you will ever read, straight out of the storytelling Head of Andy Mulligan(author of the amazing Trash) directly to your very own Brain.

About this title

About the Author

Andy Mulligan was brought up in South London. He worked as a theatre director for ten years, before travels in Asia prompted him to retrain as a teacher. He has taught English and Drama in Britain, India, Brazil and the Philippines. Andy's novel Trash has been published in twenty-two languages and is now a Bafta-nominated major film directed by Stephen Daldry and scripted by Richard Curtis.

From School Library Journal

Gr 6–10—This very long and painful slog features Richard, a Year Six British boy who undergoes a trauma and grows a paranoid and hate-filled second head, and the subsequent fallout from his/their awful behavior. Mulligan includes several extended, horrid, foul, and bigoted rants in the context of the schizophrenic second head lashing out. The underlying source of discord is his/their sense of subjugation to adult authority, personified by the cartoonish manipulative mad scientist psychologist/neurologist who pretends to help Richard/Rikki while actually plotting to harvest his/their brain. This book starts as delightfully camp—Richard is growing a second head and everyone is trying to treat him/them as normal—but the nebulous metaphor about a kid warring with himself as he tries to make peace with loss quickly devolves into a disorganized mess of unpleasant incidents with a protagonist who is unlikable and difficult to relate to. In the final 100 pages, Mulligan finally pulls things back together for an adventure-filled, friendship-heavy grand escape sequence. Language and context throughout are heavily British, which may add an additional sense of loss-in-translation for American audiences. VERDICT Black comedy with a creative hook, surely, but too unfocused and drawn out for most middle schoolers to bother getting through.—Rhona Campbell, Georgetown Day School, Washington, DC

About this edition

• Publisher: David Fickling Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0857560670
• ISBN 13: 9780857560674
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400