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Hello Mum (Quick Reads)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
It's a hot summer afternoon. Tension is in the air. A gang of youths on bikes gathers outside a chip shop. A teenage boy is stabbed and left bleeding on the street.
The boy's motherwonders how this could have happened to her son. She is full of questions, but when the answers lie so close to home, are they really what she wants to hear?
About the Author
Bernardine Evaristo is the author of four novels, Lara, The Emperor's Babe, Soul Tourists and Blonde Roots, which was chosen as the winner by the inaugural Orange Prize Youth Panel. Evaristo was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004 and the Royal Society of Arts in 2006, and she was awarded an MBE in the 2009 Queen's Birthday Honours List. She lives in London.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This isn't just a great book, it's an important book, too. If that makes it sound "grand", it isn't. Part of the "Quick Reads" publishing initiative, it puts into simple words the truth about inner city knife crime by getting a 14-year-old boy to tell us about it. JJ's street talk is simple, accessible, funny and very authentic. The major achievement of the book is in making us care about a boy whose experiences most of us only hear about through sensational news stories and grim government statistics. A definite "must read".
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Bernardine Evaristo's short, gripping novel is written through the consciousness of a young black teenage boy, JJ, living on a tough London estate, brought up by his mum, who does her best but also has his much younger stepsister to look after, little money and no help from his absent father. JJ's love for and dependence on his mother fight against his desire to be cool, to be a man, to make money - though the latter is partly to help his mum. The truth of life under the thumb of the 'Postcode Gangs', teenagers who will fight any other teenagers coming into their area from outside is harrowingly exposed, and it's mostly black-on-black violence. Maybe you just want to go to the shop to get some food, but you CANNOT cross the estate without fear of attack. And that fear makes you want to be strong. And you can't be strong without being in a gang. There is comedy and tragedy in the way JJ is inexorably sucked into the orbit of the drug-dealers. He knows it is a mistake, he wants to get out, he sees that the supposedly 'glamorous' flat of the main man is disgustingly dirty, and thinks about how his mother would hate it...the voice of the child, both humorous and melancholy, fights with the voice of the would-be hard man, and the reader is left hoping to the last page that he will make it out of there, like his clever friend Ade who wants to be an architect. Super ending made the hairs on my arms stand on end and was a genuine surprise. The language and setting feel authentic and this book is recommended reading for any teenager, and particularly any teenager tempted to think gang life is cool.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
People seem to like the way this book is written in a supposedly accessible, 'youth-speak' way, but that's what I hated about it. If it's aimed at people like the main character, perhaps as some sort of cautionary tale, then it shouldn't need to explain the meaning of the slang he uses. The way this is done, with the boy writing a letter to his mum who's, like, so uncool she doesn't know how to speak proper like innit, ya get me, LOL... didn't work very well, because I don't think you'd write like that to your mum, and if she'd been living with him all his life she'd have picked up on bits of slang and know what he meant, unless she was an absent, uncaring mum, which she wasn't. So, I found it a bit patronising, like it was actually just written by someone trying to sound 'down with the kids', like a groovy, 'wacky' school teacher. Other than that, the story was ok.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
So true to life
I felt this book was very true to life, sadly. Well writtena dn you could almost hear the boy talking. Read more
Published 10 months ago by C. A. Wright
A different voice
"Hello Mum" is written from the perspective of JJ, a 14 year old boy, as he explains to his mother about how he didn't mean to get in with a bad crowd. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Alison
Different style for a well known writer
Part of the quick reads series, this is a different style for this well known author who is more usually known for her couplets and poetry. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Book chatter
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