Review

15 year old Dan’s world has been turned upside down: his dad’s business has failed, and they’ve lost everything, including the fancy house. On top of that, his dad is (they all now learn) gay — so now his parents have split up, and his dad’s gone off somewhere. Dan and his mum have moved into her great aunt’s wee-smelling house, of which his mum’s just inherited lifetime use. (It’s going to the National Trust after that.) He’s had to leave his expensive private school, and go to the bog standard public school near his new house, where he’s the lowest of the low, friendless, and under constant threat of a thumping by Jayzo and his gang of delinquents. Dan’s mum, a great cook, has started a wedding cake business, but she keeps talking all her prospective customers out of getting married. There’s barely enough money for food, none for heating, and he doesn’t even know how to shave.

The one bright spot: the girl next door. Estelle. Dan is in love. Unfortunately, Estelle thinks he’s a weirdo. Can he find a part-time job to help pay the bills, cheer his mum up, not be a total school loser, make himself talk to his dad, be a better person, and — most impossible of all — kiss Estelle?

*

This is brilliant. It’s so well written and funny and romantic. It’s now my mission to make sure everyone reads it. I found it by accident while looking for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on my school’s ePlatform.^† I opened it up out of curiosity, and I was hooked from the start. Couldn’t put it down. Completely binge-read it from beginning to end.

Luckily, it’s short, which is great because many students want a short book. Excellent pace — absolutely cracks along. Dan is wonderfully sweet and self-deprecating through his many mishaps and terrible decisions. The supporting cast is fabulous. It’s well structured, with information held back for later reveals, and Dan’s penchant for making lists (very Nick Hornby). You can tell that Fiona Wood is a pro (and I will be reading all her other books). This one was first published in 2010 and the pop culture and media is of its time (CDs, DVDs, iPods, Radiohead), but, hey… the kids love retro. The ending (by which I mean the last sentence) could have been a touch stronger. And I’m not sure why Estelle, with her posh house & posh parents, isn’t at a posh girls’ school. But who am I to quibble? It was so much fun.

Read it; you won’t regret it.

Year 7 & up; 244 pages.

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Divorce & feelings of fatherly rejection (resolves positively); family tensions; poverty (resolves positively); snooping and unethical diary reading (resolves positively); one f-word, a few s-words & d***heads; homophobic & misogynistic slurs (criticised); family dog is unwell and needs expensive treatment which they might not be able to afford (resolves positively); school bullying (treated lightheartedly with a positive resolution); students sneak alcohol into the school dance and some students get drunk; teens sneaking out despite being grounded; briefly described kissing; very mild passing references to smoking and drugs. Main & minor relationships are mlw.

*

^†Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one CAN’T believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’

– Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

*

Wood, F. (2010). Six impossible things. Pan Macmillan Australia.

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