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Formats
Paperback Details
  • 03/2020
  • 9780998033822
  • 262 pages
  • $14.99
Ebook Details
  • 03/2020
  • B085XNPTH8
  • 262 pages
  • $3.99
The Paper Boy
Jack Hankins, as adoptee living the life of a privileged but mostly normal teenager, delivers newspapers when he's not hanging with his sister Bryony and best friends, Jamel and Ishvara. However, Jack is about to become more than just a paperboy. It all starts with a fateful school assignment to write a short story. Jack can't seem to fight the story he pens in his journal - a nine-lined prophecy of what's about to happen to him that sends him into panic. Plagued by inexplicable and disturbing mysteries that question his reality, his survival is at stake when his world starts to crumble. His nine-lined story is the catalyst for his downward spiral and leads him and his friends on a quest to confront the force that is tormenting him.
Reviews
Edgington’s mind-bending second contemporary fantasy (after Happy Jack) chronicles a teenage boy’s struggle to take charge of his destiny. Orphan Jack is now 16 and has been adopted by the affluent Hankins family. Normally a straight-A student, Jack sabotages a school assignment for reasons he can’t explain. Increasingly disturbing events begin to occur, all echoing his failing grade, and Jack thinks he’s losing his mind. On his birthday, he goes to a movie with his sister and two best friends, but the theater is empty and the teens are the stars of the movie. The movie’s message is that he’s only a character in a story, and to become the creator of his own future, he must find the source, the book Happy Jack.

The life of an average teenage boy is seamlessly twisted into a fourth-wall-breaking conundrum for Jack, his sister and friends, Edgington herself, and even the person reading the book. Jack’s fate is believably tied to every word the author writes and how far the reader reads. Readers will find themselves conscious of, and sometimes a little discomfited by, the effect that turning the page could have on Jack’s life. Later developments further disrupt conventions of narrative and incorporate religious concepts of the creation of life alongside more abstract and philosophical questions about destiny and free will.

This provocative thought exercise can be tangled and confusing, and readers expecting a conventional story will be disappointed. Despite the young protagonist, this challenging work won’t be suited to most teens. However, readers looking for a book that makes them think while telling a tale will enjoy Edgington’s exploration of predestination, artistic creation, and ownership of one’s life. Fans of Edgington’s first work of narrative disruption will find this one a worthy successor.

Takeaway: Edgington’s exploration of predestination, artistic creation, and self-determination will appeal to fans of works that demolish the fourth wall.

Great for fans of Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: -
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Formats
Paperback Details
  • 03/2020
  • 9780998033822
  • 262 pages
  • $14.99
Ebook Details
  • 03/2020
  • B085XNPTH8
  • 262 pages
  • $3.99
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