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Saturday, August 06, 2016

CBCA Shortlist: Currently Reading... Inbetween Days By Vikki Wakefield

Probably a bit early to be commenting, but this isn't really a review. I'm up to page 130. It's the last book of the Older Readers section for me - I've read the rest. I don't think it's exactly contemporary fiction, as nobody in the novel so much as mentions the Internet and the heroine, Jack, doesn't have a phone, apart from the one in the home she shares with her sister Trudy, and that one is disconnected for non-payment of the bill, so she has to go to the phone booth to try calling her boyfriend Luke(well, I say boyfriend, but they're not actually dating - all they do is meet weekly to have sex; she says she loves him, he doesn't return her feelings). Having a mobile would allow her to make contact without having to go through his family. In one scene the phone rings out - no message bank. In another, she mentions her video recorder. So, is it set in the 1980s? The 1990s? Certainly not in the here and now.

Jack seems to have a bit of obsessive compulsive disorder, taking the form of  counting the diamond-patterned tiles in the shop where she works.  She also keeps moving her bed around in her room, for no special reason, and setting up a display of toilet rolls at work, angrily shifting them back when they have been moved by the other shop worker. Definitely some OCD there!

The small town where she lives is dying, getting smaller and smaller, and has the appropriate name of  Mobius - you know, like the strip that has only one side. It also has a forest where people go to commit suicide. Very odd place!

I expect I'll finish it on time for Book Week, though, to be honest, I don't know what the students will think of it. It's a strange book...

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