Published by Corgi
Review by Allison Johnstone
R J Palacio serves us up a modern classic. Young August has a dreadful facial disfigurement, one that makes ‘ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds’.
We are not told what he actually looks like until halfway through the book; this device makes us complicit, remotely gawping and wondering just what on earth is wrong with it.
We meet August as a ten-year- old about to join a new school. The head teacher helpfully puts him in the care of a trio of youngsters, one of whom, Julian, decides not to play ball and launches a vicious campaign of bullying.
The author avoids turning August into a naïve, innocent abroad; our hero knows exactly the reaction he evokes – even in those around him, including his loyal sister Via. ‘You just don’t want your brand-new fancy high school friends to know your brother’s a freak,’ he screams at her. She is one of the more successful characters – the sibling who has to make allowances, to be identified as a person in her own right, not simply as ‘August’s sister’.
The story is told from the viewpoint of several of the characters; a common device in children’s books but one which is particularly useful here as young people will identify with Summer’s complete acceptance and Jack’s dilemma.
The one jarring note is the long description of the school camp which slows the story unnecessarily. But the denouement is at once heart-warming and difficult; Palacio just about holding back on the American schmooze.