Little Miss Sunshine meets Wonder in this delightfully charming, uplifting book club debut about a twelve-year-old would-be comedian who travels across the country to honor his dead best friend’s dream of performing in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe—the only problem being that his friend was the funny one of their duo.
Twelve-year-old would-be comedian Norman has got a lot going on, including a chronic case of psoriasis, a distinct lack of comic timing, and a dead best friend. All his life it’s just been him, his single mum Sadie, and Jax, the ‘funny one’ of their comedy duo. So when Jax dies not only is Norman devastated, it’s also the end of the boys’ Five Year Plan to take their comedy act to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe when they turned fifteen.
But Norman decides to honor Jax by
performing at the Fringe, on his own. And not when he’s fifteen—but rather in
four weeks’ time. But there’s another, far more colossal objective on Norman’s
plan that Sadie wasn’t quite ready for: Norman wants to find his father. Eager
to do anything that might put a smile on her boy’s face, Sadie resolves to face
up to her own messy past and track down the father who doesn’t even know Norman
exists, and whose identity Sadie herself isn’t quite sure of.
Thus begins a road trip from Cornwall to
Scotland, featuring a mother and son who will live in the reader’s heart for a
long time to come.
Buy Links
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | IndieBound
Libro.fm | Books-A-Million | Target | Walmart
Indigo | kobo | Google Play | Amazon
1
SADIE
When I was born my insides lay outside
my body for twenty-one days. Which is unexpected but not nearly as unusual as
you might think. For every 3,999 other babies that come out with everything
tucked in neatly and sealed away exactly where it should be, there’s one like
me. Nobody really knows why. Luck of the draw, my father used to say.
For those three weeks while I lay spread-eagled
in an incubator like a Nando’s special, a crowd of doctors gathered every
morning to discuss their cleverness and, as my organs shrank to their correct
size, bit by bit they gently posted a little more of the me-parts that had made
a break for it back inside.
Well that’s the way my mother told it
anyway. The way my father told it, the doctors gathered around the incubator
every morning to discuss whether they’d be having my large intestine or my
liver for their lunch, and whether it’d be with chips or salad. And that right
there might tell you almost everything you need to know about my parents.
On my insides’ final day of freedom the
head surgeon pushed the last bit through the slit in my stomach and stitched it
closed, presumably with everything in its rightful place. I was declared whole
and sent home to begin life like almost nothing had ever happened.
Except that even when the regular
hospital check-ups stopped, and the scar on my stomach that I’d never lived
without faded to a thin silver seam, I can always remember still feeling the
tugging behind it. Something I could never quite name, nudging at the fleshy
edges whenever things were going badly, or too well. Or just for fun. To remind
me how easily those parts of me that never really fit could come sliding out. Any time we like Sadie. Any time we like.
It wasn’t until I held my own son for the
first time that the constant, dull pressure of keeping the scar together
receded. When a nurse placed that slippery, crumpled up bundle of boy on my
chest, I tightened my grip on a handful of hospital sheet as my world creaked
on its axis, bumped into a comfy spot and was finally facing the right
way.
I didn’t feel the tug on the scar again until a different boy died, and to say I wasn’t ready for it isn’t even the most important thing. Because by then there was a lot more at stake than just my own stupid insides spilling out into the world. I was as scared as hell and I had no idea how to fix any of it. And that right there might tell you almost everything you need to know about me.
About the Author
Julietta Henderson is a full-time writer and comedy fan who splits her time between her home country of Australia and the UK. The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman is Julietta’s first novel.
Social Links
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
0 comments:
Post a Comment