Summertime Blues

A novel that centres on the agonies suffered and inflicted by teenage Alex when his parents split up. His mum drags him up into rural Yorkshire to live in bucolic strife with her lover. He also has to put up with Faye, the lover's beautiful and insufferably pleasant daughter. His own father stays to putrefy in London with his impregnated young secretary, a fading beauty for whom Alex nurtures a complex passion. Alex projects his misery onto all around him, except for the doughty young eco-warrior who inducts him into caring for stray animals. A romance seems about to blossom, until Alex realises that he is in fact in love with Faye. Then Dad's secretary goes into perilously early labour and calls on Alex for succour. He rushes down to London to help, and after naming the fragile neonate, is promptly mugged by two female thugs. A day later, he finds himself on a ferry to France, trying to get away from it all... This is the proverbial emotional roller coaster, but it's written with such pace, humour and believable, adolescent angst that I found it both moving and compelling. Anybody who has ever found it difficult to recognise what is going on inside their own head and heart will probably enjoy this.