A Handful of Stars

Adrian Mole with political overtones? Damascus is the setting for this 14-year-old boy's journal; friendship and political unrest the themes. The style is necessarily anecdotal and perhaps it's the translation which gives the prose a stiffness not normally found in writing of this sort. Both these factors combine to give the book a slow-burning fuse, but one which eventually takes hold. There are insights and observations here which will reward and delight the more able reader in Year 9 and above.