Get a Life!

Joel lives with his multi-talented older brother Noah and their mum and dad, who both have interesting and slightly non-conformist jobs. The boys attend a prestigious boys’ school, which prides itself on its annual ‘Day of Difference’, an event which the school brochure says ‘should challenge our preconceptions and prejudices’. The narrative voice is Joel’s and through his eyes we see what happens when, on the ‘Day of Difference’, a visiting author questions the boys’ attitudes towards anyone who is gay. When an older boy actually comes out the resulting homophobia, added to by the blimpish headmaster, creates a very nasty situation.

Joel is self-doubting and unable to make a stand about this when he would like to do so. Joel’s somewhat stream of consciousness narration is deployed by Ure to engage her readers and show how ‘prejudice is everywhere – and it is always gross’. This will work for those sympathetic to Joel’s perspective, but my concern is that Get a Life! won’t be read by those to whom it might, perhaps, give most pause for thought. It would, however, make an excellent starting point for class discussions about tolerance, and should be in all secondary school libraries.