Poolboy

When Brett’s stockbroker father is convicted of insider trading and jailed, family life changes dramatically. Gone are the cars, large house and luxury lifestyle. No longer able to spend his holidays lounging by the family pool, 16-year-old Brett is obliged to take a summer job cleaning pools, including the one at his former home, sold to pay off debts. Brett’s anger with his father for being a criminal and plunging the family into, well, not exactly poverty but a fairly penny-pinching existence, is the major theme of this laconic first person narrative. Brett acquires a mentor in Alfie, the 75-year-old pool cleaner who employs him and with Alfie’s calm help, gradually works through his feelings of rage and comes to see his father as a person, albeit a person with flaws. The novel has a sentimental edge with Alfie’s death resulting in resources of a more material kind coming Brett’s way but it is an agreeably easy, often humorous read that will appeal to younger teens. Simmons is certainly a fluent writer and this promises well for future novels.