Colossus

Nathan is abnormally tall for his age, stutters and behaves quite obsessively. He is in the shadow of his beautiful older sister. The pair find themselves thrown together on a holiday in Rhodes, with ‘The Olds’ permanently off on sightseeing trips. Nathan’s discovery of a cheap souvenir statuette of Colossus releases spectres of the classical past and convinces the boy that he has found, ‘…a symbol of future things that might and could be done if you weren’t afraid to try them, things that could and might happen if you had the courage to jump off the rocks…’

The plot wears a bit thin in places, relying a lot on half-formed thought processes, and I began to wonder whether it might have been better as a short story. Youngsters will have to be prepared to stick with it if they are to get to the end.