Harvey Angell

This is an exceptional book: a wonderfully human, imaginative and funny story told with great skill and awareness of what readers enjoy. Henry lives with his Aunt Agatha whose house of lodgers is run with the tightest and meanest economy of food and feeling. Harvey, the mysterious new lodger whose age is 'twenty-nine going on ninety', has a job which involves research into energy and making 'connections'. Connections are made and energy begins to flow again through the lives of Henry, Aunt Agatha and the lodgers in a way that's both exciting and heart-warming. It is a book which makes active readers, puzzling them with its plot and other side questions (how do you pronounce Harvey's surname?) and making them hungry for more story. It's also a neat parable for our mean-spirited political times.