What Happens Online

‘Nathanael loves writing stories that show his South East London childhood as the funny, warm adventurous world that wasn’t always represented as such.’ This baffling claim comes from the publishers of a novel which describes the bullying that sad, friendless 14-year-old Fred has to put up with all his time at school. At home his mother can hardly move from depression and his two younger brothers also have problems. But while waiting for the next time his tormentors close in on him Fred entertains himself with relentless streams of jokey word play. Some of this is funny enough; some goes on too long for its own good.

Fred is also a wizard at setting up online gaming sites, and when he anonymously starts using these to spill the beans on his most loathed enemies things start to improve. But his chosen weapon now starts causing others serious pain and this leads him into different types of trouble.  A dreamy new girl shows Fred some interest but is rightly annoyed when passed over in favour of those who once shunned him. An increasingly implausible happy ending eventually follows as Fred finally realises that truth is better than continual lying.

The publisher, an offspring of Sweden’s Bonnier Books, is committed to producing fiction ‘That opens our eyes to new perspectives and brings us closer together.’ Certainly there is a lot to think about in this novel with its author who has already written three well received titles clearly someone to watch out for. But should he write about bullying again I hope he will persuade his publishers to list appropriate contacts at the close there to that advise pupils on what they can still do in reality should they ever find themselves in a similarly dismal situation.