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Going Indigo
Back-cover
"Exiled from his small country town by the tragic combination of a missing father and a mother committed to a mental institution, Oliver, a pale bald-headed twelve-year-old boy, arrives at King's Cross Station accompanied by his cat, Flop. He is dreading his new life with a fortune-telling grandma he has never known. If nothing had prepared Oliver for the stern manners of Grandma Otis's companion, Lena, absolutely no-one had prepared Lena for this wild neglected child and his scrawny cat. Oliver soon discovers that the new people he's living with are possibly crazier than the ones he left behind."
(Please note the author is NOT THE SAME SAM NORTH who wrote books such as "209 Thriller Road".)
"Exiled from his small country town by the tragic combination of a missing father and a mother committed to a mental institution, Oliver, a pale bald-headed twelve-year-old boy, arrives at King's Cross Station accompanied by his cat, Flop. He is dreading his new life with a fortune-telling grandma he has never known. If nothing had prepared Oliver for the stern manners of Grandma Otis's companion, Lena, absolutely no-one had prepared Lena for this wild neglected child and his scrawny cat. Oliver soon discovers that the new people he's living with are possibly crazier than the ones he left behind."
(Please note the author is NOT THE SAME SAM NORTH who wrote books such as "209 Thriller Road".)
232 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 14, 2015
“Going Indigo” tells the story of Oliver, a 12-year-old English boy (from the country) to whom, it seems, everything bad that could happen has already happened: cancer, a mentally ill mother and a missing father. This, however, is just the start: even worse awaits him when he moves to London to live with his maternal grandmother and her housekeeper.
This novel should be unbearably grim and depressing; the fact that it isn’t is an enormous tribute to Sam North’s writing skills. Oliver is an amazing creation that stayed in my mind long after I first read this novel more than ten years ago: naive, refreshingly innocent for a modern 12-year-old, tough and -- no other word for it -- sweet. The author brings vividly to life the culture clash between country and town, focusing on Oliver’s shock at the size of the city and how seamy it can be.
North is, in my opinion, a gifted and original novelist let down by his now-defunct publisher’s poor proofreading and copyediting. This noticeably reduced my enjoyment of the book, littered, as it is, with grammatical and punctuational mistakes, and is the main reason I gave this book a rating of 4 stars instead of 5.
Overall, it is a fresh, deeply moving novel, although the ending is just a little too pat: it feels wrong, as though stuck on as an afterthought with little consideration of its effect on the book as a whole and whether it fitted in or not.
I heartily recommend it.
This novel should be unbearably grim and depressing; the fact that it isn’t is an enormous tribute to Sam North’s writing skills. Oliver is an amazing creation that stayed in my mind long after I first read this novel more than ten years ago: naive, refreshingly innocent for a modern 12-year-old, tough and -- no other word for it -- sweet. The author brings vividly to life the culture clash between country and town, focusing on Oliver’s shock at the size of the city and how seamy it can be.
North is, in my opinion, a gifted and original novelist let down by his now-defunct publisher’s poor proofreading and copyediting. This noticeably reduced my enjoyment of the book, littered, as it is, with grammatical and punctuational mistakes, and is the main reason I gave this book a rating of 4 stars instead of 5.
Overall, it is a fresh, deeply moving novel, although the ending is just a little too pat: it feels wrong, as though stuck on as an afterthought with little consideration of its effect on the book as a whole and whether it fitted in or not.
I heartily recommend it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review