Forever X

From McCaughrean we have come to expect an entertaining mixture of the wise and the witty: Forever X does not disappoint. This highly imaginative story is essentially concerned with childhood wonder and adult loss, a fable given strikingly concrete representation. The 'Forever X' of the title is a bed and breakfast establishment which specialises in providing Christmas festivities every day of the year, where the lonely and rejected come to seek unseasonal happiness. Into this company there accidentally stumbles the Shepherd family, whose few days' stay involves them in a sequence of events, by turn hilarious and dangerous. More significantly perhaps, principally because if the role given to Mel, the younger Shepherd child, these events are to enforce upon the family a reassessment of what the very word 'family' means. This is a stunningly clever novel, where, however, the author's powers of invention are never allowed to take precedence over her humane and generous vision.