Home
  • Home
  • Latest Issue
  • Past Issues
  • Authors & Artists
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • News
  • Forums
  • Search

Eating Things on Sticks

  • View
  • Rearrange

Digital version – browse, print or download

Can't see the preview?
Click here!

How to print the digital edition of Books for Keeps: click on this PDF file link - click on the printer icon in the top right of the screen to print.

BfK Newsletter

Receive the latest news & reviews direct to your inbox!

BfK No. 186 - January 2011
BfK 186 January 2011

Cover Story
This issue’s cover features Ally Kennen and her latest book, Quarry. Ally Kennen is interviewed by Julia Eccleshare. Thanks to Marion Lloyd Books for their help with this January cover.

Digital Edition
By clicking here you can view, print or download the fully artworked Digital Edition of BfK 186 January 2011

  • PDFPDF
  • Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version
  • Send to friendSend to friend

Eating Things on Sticks

Anne Fine
 Kate Aldous
(Yearling)
208pp, 978-0440869375, RRP £6.99, Paperback
10-14 Middle/Secondary
Buy "Eating Things on Sticks" on Amazon

Having burnt down the family’s kitchen, Harry sets off to spend a holiday with his Uncle Tristram on a remote Scottish island with his uncle’s new girlfriend. The enthusiastic reaction of other reviewers to this story when it first appeared in hardback makes me wonder whether I have lost my sense of humour. True, Anne Fine’s ear for barbed dialogue and her jaundiced eye for human behaviour are still apparent. This is essentially a comedy of adult behaviour as observed by a child and there are plenty of laughs at adult expense (although some might be over the heads of her child readers). There’s a well signposted apocalyptic finale. But there are also some weary characters and situations: the bad weather of Scottish islands, the beardedness of their inhabitants and the incomprehensibility of their language; and some characters and situations that, despite the ingenuity with which they are deployed, are so implausible as to lose the sense of reality on which this kind of comedy depends.

Reviewer: 
Clive Barnes
2
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Help/FAQ
  • My Account