Mrs Butler's Blog 11

Number 11 October 2005

Surprise of the week: Very Different by Anne Fine.

I came back to school this week so there hasn’t been as much time for reading – or writing the blog – but I must tell you about this book. It has a very bright yellow cover with a cartoon-like face of a smiling gnome on the front, which suggests that this is one of Anne Fine’s books for younger readers. I found it in the Quickread section.

I am a passionate Anne Fine fan and I hadn’t read this one. It was a huge surprise. It is a book of very funny short stories; the first one is about a stolen garden gnome; in the title story a young couple try to get an abortion: another is about a boy’s difficulty in coming out to his parents – so, not a book for Year 7s after all!

I loved the one about a Scottish miner who cannot bear the idea of his son doing embroidery - his daughter can service the car so it’s a bit heavy-handed against gender stereotyping, but it is so funny that you won’t mind. (Anne Fine has always had a thing about the dumbing-down of what you learn in school. This story reminded me of a splendid diatribe in Goggle-Eyes, I think, when daughter says she’s got to wash her hair as homework because they are studying shampoo.) As well as the funny ones there is one truly creepy story and a sad one about the results of emotional cruelty.

By the way, I forgot to tell you that the gnome is wearing dark glasses. I didn’t realise the significance of this at first. You’ll have to read it to find out why.