A Small Madness
Dianne Touchell
A Small Madness
Dianne Touchell
A devastating, compelling novel that will get everyone talking, from the author of Creepy and Maud.
Rose didn’t tell anyone about it. She wondered if it showed. She looked at herself in the mirror and turned this way and then that way. She stood as close to the mirror as she could, leaning over the bathroom basin, looking into her own eyes until they disappeared behind the fog of her breath, looking for something. Some evidence that she was different now. Something had shifted inside her, a gear being ratcheted over a clunky cog, gaining torque, starting her up. But it didn’t show. How could all of these feelings not show? She was a woman now but it didn’t show and she couldn’t tell anyone.
‘Touchell has done an outstanding job. I literally couldn’t tear my eyes away from the manuscript. I was with Rose and Michael and Liv the whole way. Every single character, large and small, was flesh and blood real to me. Her writing is masterful and has so much to say to young people and those who live and work with them.’ Erica Wagner, Publisher.
Review
Angela Crocombe
This is a beautifully crafted, cautionary tale for teenagers on the perils of unprotected sex and the dangers of keeping the truth hidden. Michael and Rose are both good kids going into their final year at high school – studious, involved in extra-curricular activities and with close families. They are also naive, inexperienced and very much in love. Ill-equipped to cope with the pregnancy that results from their first sexual experience, they deny what is happening to Rose’s body until circumstances take over.
Drawn from actual events, the story is written in alternating chapters from the perspectives of Rose and Michael with immediacy and compassion. It’s a wonderful, if tragic, tale. This book should be required reading for all teenagers 15 and up. It will also provoke powerful discussion within a classroom situation.
Angela Crocombe is from Readings Carlton.
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