Now That I've Found You

The narrator of Now That I’ve Found You is an A-level student in Cardiff. He meets a mysterious red-haired girl on the castle bridge in the city and is bowled over by her immediately, despite not finding out her name (though we never find out his name). She seems to think it’s 1968, even though the story is set in the modern-day. She maintains a convincing charade of coming from the 60s, with the clothes, the knowledge of the music (Pink Floyd and more obscure groups) and the incomprehension of mobile phones and computers. This is entertaining for the reader though frustrating for the narrator, and keeps us guessing as to whether we are in a quasi-fantasy novel or something more prosaic.

The story charts the few months of an academic year while the protagonist plays a bit of cat and mouse with the girl, has an interview for a university place and finds out the true story of his parents’ relationship (he knows his mother died in a horrific train accident but his father belatedly, and somewhat anticlimactically, lets him know they were never married).

There are other revelations towards the end, not least that the girl is called Rhiannon. Rhiannon doesn’t come from the 1960s but she’d probably quite like to as she is HIV positive after being raped as a young teenager. Harley deals sensitively and truthfully with having HIV, bringing in how school children often don’t believe the statistics and think they are immortal and immune. However it’s a shame that the Angel of Death hinted at throughout the book is only revealed to be HIV 20 pages from the end. Harley may have done this to make his book a young adult novel about young love but the lasting impression is that it’s about HIV and a sequel is begging to be written.