The Lily Pickle Eleven

Mr Kendal, the long suffering and inexplicably optimistic teacher of Lily Pickle and her entourage of teenage rogues and vagabonds, attempts to channel the energies of his anarchic flock into the creation of a football team.

I found the ensuing events difficult to reconstruct from the prattling staccato of the narrator, whose every other utterance is larded with corn. For me this was a very tiring read, but the book may prove exhilarating for readers who are closer than I am to the experience of being thirteen and hungry for hellraising.