Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

Image. Advertisement:

A Small Madness (Dianne Touchell, A&U)

Rose is in Year 12, happy spending time with her best friend Liv and being madly in love with her perfect boyfriend Michael. Then suddenly, she finds out she’s pregnant … and deludes herself she isn’t. Michael plays along, despite his growing concern for Rose, and Liv nearly loses her best friend. As events spiral out of control and Rose slips even further away, each character is confronted by the poor decisions they have made and their own part in the growing disaster. A Small Madness is an incredibly intense and powerful book, the sort to be devoured in a single sitting. Exploring the power of the lies we can tell ourselves, Dianne Touchell shows the destruction caused by Rose’s delusions and their profound effect on those around her. Touchell has mastered the art of switching viewpoints and uses this to document Rose’s break from reality with heartbreaking detail. Each of the characters is thoroughly fleshed out, flawed and believable. Painfully evocative, horrific and totally addictive, A Small Madness packs an emotional suckerpunch reminiscent of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak or Wintergirls, and is best suited for a more mature teen reader. 

Meg Whelan is the children’s book buyer at the Hill of Content bookshop in Melbourne 

 

Category: Reviews