The World of Norm: 8: May Contain Buts by Jonathan Meres
| The World of Norm: 8: May Contain Buts by Jonathan Meres | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: For the eighth novel in this series, a surprisingly sturdy and amusing episode, as adults cause Norm yet more mind-twisting, bike-ride-delaying problems. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 288 | Date: June 2015 |
| Publisher: Orchard Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781408334065 | |
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Why is it the only person in Norm's world able to think straight is Norm? His best mate Mikey is clamming up on certain subjects, and blaming mood swings on his hormones (well, he is all of thirteen, after all). His dad seems to be mourning the loss of an antique bottle of aftershave, his mother thinks sorting the recycling is a cure for boredom, and his grandfather is all full of weird expressions and euphemism thingies. That's not to mention his younger brothers, who have it in mind to use mum's hair straightener on the dog. And that's certainly not to mention the girl next door, who evidently has been incapable of thinking straight since birth, but at least is doing the good thing by moving house. It's a flipping miracle that Norm can get through a weekend like this without anything disastrous happening. Or can he?
You would think that, seeing I haven't encountered this series at all between book two and now – the eighth novel, no less – the situation would be more 'may contain confusion'. But that's not the case. I saw something of the sitcom existence last time round, where so little changed the books could more or less be read in any order, nothing would particularly alter from episode to episode, and things would just tick over pleasantly. That seems to have been the case in the interim. Certainly this volume was very pleasant.
One of the reasons behind that lack of confusion is that things are conveyed to the reader so easily and convincingly. Hardly ever does the narration step away from Norm's point of view to give us something else, and 99% of the time it's to show how ignorant, obtuse or gullible Norm is being. He really does fit in to the adult world's view of twelve year olds, while at the same time ringing outstandingly true to life for any of those said tweenagers. Jonathan Meres is fast becoming a brilliant social commentator, even if his sole topic is the illogicality and weirdness of people older than his hero.
So there's an immediacy and a grab to the writing that will pull the target audience in, alongside the chatty style, with so many words emphasised in bold you come away with spots before your eyes. There are also some cool illustrations, and large paragraph breaks, even between individual lines of dialogue, that break up the page and make the novel look more of an achievement for the reluctant reader than it really is. But there are also great lines and circumstances, meaning that if this were a sitcom it would be well worth getting the box set downloaded. I've been seeing several series for this audience drift away from their initial qualities recently (hello, Tom Gates), and I really didn't expect to jump back on board this series with such a pleasurable result after such a long time. This, then, defied all those expectations. May contain buts? No – more like 'may contain impetus to go back and collect all the others'.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy. We also have a review of book nine in the series.
The series started here.
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You can read more book reviews or buy The World of Norm: 8: May Contain Buts by Jonathan Meres at Amazon.com.
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