PhilPaine.com

This is a juve­nile nov­el about a teenag­er liv­ing on the streets of an uniden­ti­fied Cana­di­an city. He is not, strict­ly speak­ing, a “run­away”, but the equal­ly com­mon “thrown away”, effec­tive­ly kicked out of a dis­func­tion­al sin­gle-fam­i­ly home. Unlike most books of this sort, Haworth-Attard’s treat­ment is nei­ther sen­ti­men­tal, nor preachy. This kind of street life is some­thing I know well, and I can vouch for the accu­ra­cy of most of the details. I found only a few small improb­a­bil­i­ties, and those sub­ject to inter­pre­ta­tion. The author has done her home­work. As a sto­ry, it reads well. The char­ac­ters are believ­able, and the use of Ein­stein as a leit­mo­tif is deft­ly han­dled. In recent years, fic­tion aimed at teenage read­ers is being writ­ten at a very high lev­el qual­i­ty, espe­cial­ly in Cana­da. Iron­i­cal­ly, one has to go to teenage fic­tion to find the hon­esty, seri­ous sub­ject mat­ter, and emo­tion­al inten­si­ty that are van­ish­ing from genre fic­tion aimed at adults.