Annerton Pit

This is a very exciting, thought-provoking thriller, well worth looking at for alternative GCSE texts. I read Annerton Pit ten years ago, when it first came out and I've always remembered it, not for the story but for the high quality of the writing. Unlike this edition, where the cover and the blurb give it away, there was no indication at first that the main character is blind. Only gradually did you realise that the author never describes what Jake can see, only what his other five senses are picking up. His handicap becomes a life-line when Jake and Martin, his brother, are dangerously incarcerated in the ill-famed Annerton Pit, whilst searching for their ghost-hunting grandpa. he came a shade too close to the dangerous Green Revolution group, who are taught that 'a cause is something you have to be prepared to kill for' and are hijacking a nearby oil rig. There is much tension in this excellent book and plenty of wisdom -- 'If you mine down through the maze of your own being, perhaps... you will find the explosive gas of violence, the springs of love.'